The Challenge
In the case of In re Carvana Co. Securities Litigation, the U.S. District Court for Arizona took an unusual step in August 2025. It ordered a pilot test of the defendants' hyperlinked document preservation capabilities. Instead of a briefing schedule or a meet-and-confer, the court required a practical demonstration using Forensic Email Collector to retrieve historical hyperlinked documents for up to two custodians, producing versions "as closely contemporaneous to, but preceding" the email as feasible.
When the pilot supported the plaintiffs' concerns, the court expanded the test in January 2026. It required the production of 250 plaintiff-selected emails across all 25 ESI custodians, with a 10-day deadline.
This wasn't about determining if hyperlinks are legally equivalent to attachments. The court imposed a capability test and scaled it when results warranted further scrutiny. This progression is a warning for every litigation team still using outdated email-era preservation workflows against collaboration platform evidence.
The Environment and Constraints
The Carvana litigation didn't happen in a vacuum. Three forces converged to create this test:
Judicial scrutiny is increasing. Courts are moving from accepting infeasibility arguments to testing them. While Yotta Technologies v. Evolve Bancorp reaffirmed that hyperlink treatment should be case-specific, the Carvana approach provides a template for testing preservation claims. The trajectory from Epic Games v. Google through contextual production requirements for Slack and Teams data points toward greater scrutiny of what workflows actually capture.
Industry guidance acknowledged the gap. The Sedona Conference published its Commentary on Discovery of Collaboration Platforms Data in 2025. Courts often cite Sedona as authoritative. When Sedona outlines challenges like identifying relevant workspaces, handling data stored in multiple locations, and preserving evidence where messages reference living documents, these challenges shape what "reasonable steps" mean under Rule 37(e).
The technical gap is provable. Test your workflow: Share a document via a Teams message, edit it, collect the message using your standard process, and check if you captured the version the recipient saw or the version at collection time. Most workflows capture the current version, not the contemporaneous one. This mismatch isn't a minor issue; it's a fundamental gap between referenced communication and captured preservation.
The Approach Taken
The court's approach in Carvana marks a shift in handling preservation disputes. Instead of debating whether links should be treated as attachments, the court imposed a practical test using Forensic Email Collector to determine what preservation was technically achievable.
The progression was clear:
- Bounded pilot: Test two custodians to establish baseline capability.
- Evaluate results: Determine if the pilot supported further testing.
- Scale the requirement: Expand to 250 emails across all custodians with a tight timeline.
This approach tests infeasibility claims instead of accepting them. If your preservation workflow can't pass a forensic capability test, your "reasonable steps" argument collapses.
Results and What Changed
The Carvana orders didn't create a universal rule about hyperlink preservation. They provided a judicial template for testing preservation capabilities rather than accepting technical limitation assertions.
The court moved from theory to demonstration. When the pilot supported plaintiffs' concerns, the court expanded the test to a production-scale requirement with a 10-day deadline across all custodians.
For litigation teams, this changes the game. You can't rely on arguments about preservation being "too difficult" without being prepared to demonstrate that claim through testing. If your workflow fails that test, you're defending a preservation gap in court.
What Should Have Been Different
The issue wasn't that Carvana's legal team made poor decisions. The problem is that most preservation workflows were built for an evidence model where messages carried static copies, not live references to evolving documents.
If your workflow was designed for email attachments, it's calibrated for the wrong evidence model. Collaboration platforms don't work like email. A Teams message referencing a SharePoint document points to a living file that changes after the message is sent.
The solution isn't better legal arguments. It's workflow architecture that captures version-contemporaneous content. This means:
- Identifying when a message references external content.
- Retrieving the version of that content that existed when the message was sent.
- Preserving the relationship between the message and the referenced version.
- Documenting the preservation method so it's defensible under testing.
Most standard eDiscovery tools don't do this by default. They collect what exists now, not what existed then.
Takeaways for Your Team
Run the five-minute test. Share a document via Teams, edit it, collect the message, and check what version you captured. If you got the current version instead of the contemporaneous one, your workflow has a gap. Knowing it exists is the first step toward closing it.
Understand that "reasonable steps" is now informed by Sedona's 2025 Commentary. Courts cite Sedona as authoritative. When Sedona catalogs preservation challenges for collaboration platforms, those challenges define what "reasonable" means. You can't claim ignorance of documented problems.
Prepare for capability testing, not just legal argument. Carvana shows courts are willing to order practical demonstrations of preservation workflows. If you're asserting that certain preservation steps are infeasible, be prepared to prove that claim through testing.
Calibrate your workflows for the evidence model you face. If your preservation process was designed for email attachments, it won't handle live document references correctly. The gap isn't theoretical. It's measurable, and courts are starting to measure it.
The convergence of judicial action, industry guidance, and provable technical gaps means the time for arguing that email-era workflows still qualify as "reasonable steps" is running out. The question isn't whether collaboration platforms create preservation challenges. That's settled. The question is whether your workflow reflects current industry knowledge or if it's still stuck in an outdated evidence model.
