What should happen once a crash, injury, or other dispute looks headed toward a claim or lawsuit? A litigation hold is a formal step telling people and businesses to keep relevant evidence and stop routine deletion, destruction, or overwriting of records. That can include emails, text messages, dashcam video, driver logs, maintenance records, GPS data, photos, incident reports, and paper files. The goal is simple: preserve what happened before key proof disappears.

In practical terms, a litigation hold matters because a lot of evidence is temporary. Video gets recorded over. Phones get replaced. Companies purge data on a schedule. After a highway wreck in North Dakota, where the North Dakota Highway Patrol may be covering huge distances across 70,000 square miles, there can be delays before every detail is documented. A quick hold letter from a lawyer can help preserve evidence that never makes it into the official report.

For an injury claim, missing records can change who gets blamed and by how much. That matters in North Dakota because the state follows modified comparative fault with a 50% bar under N.D.C.C. § 32-03.2-02: if an injured person is 50% or more at fault, recovery is blocked. A litigation hold can protect evidence that supports liability, proves damages, or shows the other side destroyed proof - sometimes called spoliation of evidence.