E-mails return with a vengeance

Business e-mail is often full of smoking guns that can harm a company if and when a dissatisfied employee, customer, vendor or regulator files a lawsuit.

“No one is immune from this — large lawsuits, small lawsuits, large corporate clients or very small corporate clients,” Scottsdale, Ariz., lawyer Christopher Stuart said last month at an Arizona small-business seminar.

Stuart advised businesses to consider three caveats regarding e-mail:

“ Discourage the nonessential use of e-mail.

E-mail can be a speedy timesaver or a handy tool to document transactions, Stuart said.

“What it’s not good for is every single time you want to vent a frustration or talk about something that’s going on in the office or with a client relationship,” he said.

“ Don’t push Send without asking yourself, “Would I write this under the company letterhead?”

He cited one message in which employees made plans to leave work early and go to a topless bar. That e-mail was used as evidence of shoddy oversight in a product-contamination lawsuit against the company.

“ Think before hitting Forward.

This is especially important with communications that have disclaimers at the bottom, Stuart said. Attorney-client privilege, for example, is waived if the client forwards an attorney’s e-mail regarding legal matters.