The day Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer was placed on administrative leave over his handling of abuse allegations against a longtime assistant, he asked a colleague how to delete old text messages from his university mobile phone, outside investigators hired by the university said in a report released last month.
Yet the legal team investigating Mr. Meyer’s conduct, led by former Securities and Exchange Commission chairwoman Mary Jo White, decided not to send Mr. Meyer’s phone to a forensics lab to determine if he actually destroyed evidence, according to two people familiar with the matter.
… Jack Greiner, a Cincinnati-based lawyer who specializes in media law, says Ohio State’s records-retention policy requires saving correspondence that isn’t transitory–not including, for instance, a text message saying you’ll be home late–for at least one year.
“A blanket practice of deleting texts violates the records-retention policy on its face, which therefore constitutes a violation of the [state] statute,” Mr. Greiner said.