IT LEGAL FORENSICS

Caroline Fanning Solicitors are diversifying into IT legal forensics to assist litigants find missing evidence(party’s T&Cs in historic years where company may have updated their website/amended their T&Cs in light of litigation threat). IT legal forensics may also assist in authenticating witnesses and may assist in defamation cases where the damaging material has been strategically removed. IT forensic services will also include ascertainment of metadata from digital/soft copy emails to authenticate this evidence/

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No fee where nothing found.

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Justice Seeks Truth. But does not always find it. IT Legal Forensics will assist this search. In a recent package holiday case where the defendants successfully prevailed by exploiting the “evidential deficit” of the plaintiff and asking the Court to effectively engage in “guesswork” Caroline Fanning succeeded in locating relevant archived evidence namely the website of the shore excursion company in 2016 which had it been found in time may have led to a different court determination. This case highlights the need to engage IT legal forensic expertise pre trial as it is not always possible to overturn a court decision subsequently in light of the desirable principle of finality of litigation and a party may have to start plenary proceedings to assert a violation of their fundamental/constitutional rights and/or plead fraud in order to prevail on the foot of newly discovered post trial evidence which they not be prepared to do due to lack of funds or confidence in the system.

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ref Curran v Byrne High Court of Ireland

“ 231. Prof. Kechadi stated that when doing a full digital forensic examination, it was divided into three stages. The first stage was the acquisition stage, which concerns the acquisition and retention of the data, which is the subject matter of the investigation. The second stage is the analysis of that data. The third stage is reporting on the data having carried out a thorough analysis thereof. He stated that the acquisition phase was critical, because the validity of the subsequent analysis and reporting, depended entirely on whether proper procedures had been followed at the acquisition stage. In this case, the accepted protocols in relation to the acquisition of data had not been followed. He was very critical of the data which had been presented to Mr. Harbison, in the form of the hard copy of the email metadata and the soft copies of the two emails that survived on the K Club server, which had been put on a USB stick. In relation to the former, he stated that this was merely a page with material typed onto it. There was no way to validate the accuracy or authenticity of any of that data. Put at its simplest, it was just a page on which anyone could have typed literally anything. “

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Retrospective application of Terms/guidelines published later (and which are now known to have understated the risk) found by Courts to be unsound. ref Mesothelioma Breach of Duty: Bussey (Widow and Executrix of the Estate of David Edwin Bussey) v 00654701 Limited (Formally Anglia Heating Limited) & Anr. [2018] EWCA Civ 243

It can seem insurmountable to find evidence in the “relevant timeframe” and Caroline Fanning will combine her many years working in the IT sector and forensic engineering background to assist parties in litigation attain proper justice in the face of unprincipled or unscrupulous plaintiffs/defendants who may try to persuade a court all burdens of proof rest on the other party as they conceal vital evidence they may assume (wrongly ) can never be located. There is a huge gap in the Irish legal system for this work and it may avoid appeals etc where an aggrieved party cannot (rightly) accept a courts verdict they know is unfair. It also helps avoid trials by ambush.

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Reed v. Royal Caribbean Cruises 2021

“there is no archive of th[ese] page[s] prior to this date.” Icl. 14(c), (d). Although the Lock Declaration goes on to state that the links “would have contained the AUS T&Cs in effect at that lime, ^s‘ id., the Court finds that the more prudent course of action is to abstain from guessing. The Court is not satisfied by the Lock Declaration’s reliance on webpages that were accessed in April 2020 to rebut Plaintiffs’ assertion that no such webpages existed in October 2019. Thus, the Court will not consider the Lock Declaration in resolving the Motion to Dismiss.”

Caroline Fanning deploying IT Legal Forensic skill and expertise was able to locate the link referred to in the Lock Declaration above which Royal Caribbean Cruises told the Southern District of Florida Court was not archived. In fact it was archived as below.

web.archive.org/web/20191014091430/https://www.royalcaribbean.com/aus/en/

This case highlights the critical importance of engaging suitably competent and appropriately qualified diligent professionals on your behalf to protect and defend your rights.

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