LEGAL HOLD NOTICE

To: Sara Okafor, VP of Engineering; the six engineers on the sensor firmware team; Fenwick Embedded LLC and its two firmware contractors; Marcus Bell, former sensor-line QA lead; sales, support, and customer-success personnel who handled Ridgeline VX-9 communications; and IT, records management, and vendor-administration personnel responsible for the outside CRM/support-ticket platform  
From: Litigation Counsel, Trellick Automation  
Date: [Date]  
Re: Preservation of Information — Ridgeline Foods Demand Regarding VX-9 Proximity Sensors

Trellick received a demand letter from Ridgeline Foods alleging defective VX-9 proximity sensors, including two line-stoppage incidents in the past 90 days. Litigation is reasonably anticipated. You are required to preserve all potentially relevant information in your possession, custody, or control. This notice does not imply any violation or liability.

Preserve all information relating to: VX-9 development, design, firmware, configuration, testing, validation, QA, telemetry, logs, incidents, stoppages, field performance, sales, support, claims, and communications with or about Ridgeline. Date range: from the date three years preceding the demand letter through the present. Include drafts, notes, screenshots, whiteboard photos, reports, code, branches, commits, tickets, attachments, and metadata.

Covered custodians/sources: company email; Slack; Jira; self-hosted Git repositories; test-bench telemetry; shared drives; laptops, phones, tablets; personal devices and personal apps used for VX-9 work; messaging apps; CRM; support-ticket system and attachments; meeting notes; and materials held by or for Trellick, including Fenwick Embedded LLC and its contractors.

Prohibited actions. Do not delete, overwrite, erase, re-image, recycle, purge, archive in a way that destroys or obscures, or allow routine destruction of potentially relevant information. Do not purge old shared-drive folders, cancel Jira/Git issues or branches, delete telemetry, close or modify tickets to remove attachments, or disable logging. Do not rely on your own judgment to select what to keep; preserve all in-scope material and report anything at risk to Legal.

Auto-deleting systems. If a system or app automatically deletes, expires, or overwrites potentially relevant data, you must immediately notify Legal and suspend or collect the data. For any personal-phone messaging app used for VX-9 work, suspend auto-deletion now, preserve all in-scope messages, files, screenshots, and media, and do not use the app for further VX-9 work unless Legal approves a preservation method. If you cannot suspend auto-deletion, export the data to Legal before deletion and stop using the app for in-scope work.

Fenwick Embedded LLC. The two contractor engineers must preserve all in-scope source code, repositories, emails, messaging-app data, notes, and work product. Fenwick must ensure preservation, suspend auto-deleting systems, and cooperate with collection.

Acknowledgment. By 5:00 p.m. tomorrow, reply to Trellick Litigation Support (legal.holds@trellickautomation.com; (555) 014-2100) confirming: (1) you received this notice; (2) you have identified all in-scope sources you control or can access; (3) you have suspended or reported all auto-deleting sources; (4) you will not destroy in-scope information. Report changes, new sources, or inability to comply immediately. This hold remains in effect until released in writing.

MEMORANDUM  
Privileged & Confidential — Attorney Work Product  
To: General Counsel  
From: Litigation Counsel  
Date: [Date]  
Re: Immediate Preservation Actions — Ridgeline/VX-9

1. Marcus Bell (most time-critical): Suspend Friday laptop reimage; image laptop, export email/calendar/files, and place his email on preservation hold before 30-day deletion. Owner: IT Security/Legal. Deadline: today, before reimage. This is most time-critical because it is a fixed, near-term, irreversible wipe of a key QA custodian’s complete endpoint; personal-app suspension stops future loss but cannot recover data lost to reimage.

2. Personal messaging app: Instruct Sara, team, and Fenwick contractors to disable one-week auto-deletion; export group thread/media; collect if export insufficient. Owner: Custodians now; IT forensics backup. Deadline: immediate today.

3. Shared-drive cleanup: Suspend weekend purge; identify/hold VX-9, Ridgeline, sensor QA folders; back up items >24 months likely relevant. Owner: IT Storage/Records. Deadline: before weekend run, today.

4. Fenwick Embedded LLC: Issue third-party preservation demand; suspend auto-deletion; snapshot/collect contractor code, repos, communications, and app data; provide collection access. Owner: Legal. Deadline: send today.

5. Outside CRM/support-ticket vendor: Send preservation letter; suspend deletion of CRM records and closed-ticket attachments; collect all Ridgeline VX-9 CRM records, tickets, closed tickets, attachments, and logs. Owner: Legal/Vendor Mgmt. Deadline: send today; collection in 5 business days.

6. Test-bench telemetry: Suspend 21-day overwrites; snapshot relevant VX-9 validation telemetry and rig configs. Owner: Engineering Ops/IT. Deadline: before next overwrite, within 24 hours.

7. Slack: Suspend 45-day auto-delete; export relevant channels/DMs and increase retention. Owner: IT/Slack Admin. Deadline: within 24 hours.

8. Git/Jira: Disable deletion/garbage collection; snapshot repos, branches, commits; export VX-9/Ridgeline issues, comments, and attachments. Owner: DevOps. Deadline: within 48 hours.

9. CRM/ticket collection: Verify vendor suspension; export/collect Ridgeline accounts, contacts, activities, notes, files, and ticket metadata. Owner: Sales Ops/IT. Deadline: within 48 hours.

10. Custodian devices: Image/collect Sara’s and firmware team’s work laptops, phones, and removable media used for VX-9. Owner: IT Forensics. Deadline: within 5 business days.