Email dispute

[retired_member11]

I won't bore people with the nitty gritty of this domain story, but the central issue is a dispute about whether or not the other party sent commercially critical emails ata particular point during negotiations. They say they did send. When asked to provide copies of these emails they claim to have already deleted them from their email client and that their archive has been purged. They also claim that the emails were not returned 'undelivered'. Interestingly only the critical emails did not arrive, whilst all the inconsequential ones did.

What to do? I'm not an expert on email. Does anyone know if there is a technical way to find out categorically whether their claim is true? To be clear, I'm absolutely confident that they neither composed nor send the emails. How to expose their deceit?

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Cheers.

 

[rob]

One option depending how you have things setup is to look through email server logs as that will record time / dates / whofrom / whoto etc.

 

[retired_member11]

Thanks Rob.

What's really disappointing about this story is that the other party isn't some shady outfit, but rather a sizeable public body. I'm already trying the Freedom of Information Act route to force disclosure but I'm sceptical it will work. Time will tell.

 

[Admin]

surely a company of any size keeps backups of business communications for a few months at least?

 

[Slater]

If they are a company of any size they will be running some kind of email server to host mailboxes such as Microsoft Exchange Server.

If this is the case they will almost certainly have backups of the mail databases, dont know about other email server software but with Exchange Server even an email that has been deleted from deleted items in the Outlook client is recoverable for a period of time.

 

[retired_member11]

surely a company of any size keeps backups of business communications for a few months at least?

Quite right, but keeping a backup of emails that never actually existed is technically more challenging ;-). They are lying but proving it is the problem.

 

[Beasty]

Quite right, but keeping a backup of emails that never actually existed is technically more challenging ;-). They are lying but proving it is the problem.

As you say - proving a negative is always a bit tricky!

If the dispute is "legal" then the onus is on them to show that the emails were sent and received - showing "sent" copies would be evidence to support (but not prove) that. In the absence of any evidence on their side - the burden of proof should not be on you to show that you did not receive them.

 

[Jeewhizz]

you could go for the log route. However, if it were me in their position, and i knew beyond all doubt that you didn't have incoming email logging, then I could easily forge the mail log to my benefit.

Have a look at your email logs and see if there is anything...

 

[bb99]

Argonaut, I know you said you didn't want to get into the nitty gritty, but I'm curious as to why the receipt (or non-receipt) of emails is relevant to the dispute?

 

[retired_member11]

As you say - proving a negative is always a bit tricky!

If the dispute is "legal" then the onus is on them to show that the emails were sent and received - showing "sent" copies would be evidence to support (but not prove) that. In the absence of any evidence on their side - the burden of proof should not be on you to show that you did not receive them.

I agree.

It may well go legal if I don't get satisfaction.

 

[retired_member11]

Argonaut, I know you said you didn't want to get into the nitty gritty, but I'm curious as to why the receipt (or non-receipt) of emails is relevant to the dispute?

The emails were about receiving due notification of something critical et.c, et.c., nitty gritty, itty bitty. I would classify it as a 'duty of care/ due diligence' issue.