Fourth Circuit rules that litigation hold does not require party to completely suspend document destruction

In Blue Sky Travel & Tours, LLC v. Al Tayyar, 606 Fed. Appx. 689, 2015 U.S. App. LEXIS 5166 (4th Cir. Va. 2015), the court concluded that the magistrate judge applied an incorrect legal standard by requiring the defendants to preserve all documents once they were put on notice of pending litigation. Instead, the defendants were required to preserve documents that they knew, or should have known, were relevant to the parties’ dispute.  The court rejected the view that document destruction should stop because “you don’t know what may or may not be relevant.”