need help finding the date a emails was sent

[b147082]

I am in a legal dispute with a con man who is stating that he sent me an
email changing the terms of our contract. He turned in an email to the
arbitrator (altered) that said he sent it to me in Jan 20 2007 changing our
contract terms. This never happened I would never have accepted it. The
arbitrator ruled that he must prove he sent it and I received it. Three
months later he comes in with a read receipt saying I opened it 15 hours
later. Both of these were printed out and no one has seen the actual emails
he is stating he has. I have requested a subpoena to look at his computer to
see these. His ISP is Comcast and he uses outlook. He stated in his reply
that Comcast sent him a read receipt showing I opened this email.

How can I prove these were never sent or the read receipt was sent????

 

[JP]

You can't prove a negative.

--JP

 

[Dmitry Streblechenko]

And Comcast cannot send read receipts.
Delivery receipts are sent by the server (but that does not mean the
receipient read the message).
Read receipts are sent by the client app (Outlook) *if* the client is set to
send them (I always have read receips turned off)
Unless both you and the other side are using mail servers to store messages
that neither of you can control, nothing can be proved either way:
PST is a local file, and it is easy to have anything you please there, dated
any date you want.

--
Dmitry Streblechenko (MVP)
http://www.dimastr.com/
OutlookSpy - Outlook, CDO
and MAPI Developer Tool
-
You can't prove a negative.

--JP

 

[JP]

I guess the OP would have to come back and state what mail program HE
is using. And if he is using Outlook, whether return receipts are
turned on.

--JP

 

[b147082]

Thanks for the info, I use Outlook 2003 as so does the other person. I do
keep my return receipts turn off on all my email products. Two years I was
doing high risk training for the Special Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for
this company and when I came home to get paid, he claims we changed our
original contract and agreed to give me his stock (worthless) for my pay and
no money, my real contract that is signed by both parties stated 150.00 per
hour. No one has seen the emails other than a printed copy he sent to the
arbitrator on the copy both the send and from was his own email address, when
we questioned this, he claimed he sent it to himself first for his record
then sent it to me. We are trying to subpoena his computer and need to know
what is possible if anything to find. Comcast is both our ISP and they don't
keep anything after it is downloaded off their servers. He is a crook and I
don't know how well he can dummy up an email of if there is a way to show a
fraudulent email or receipt.

 

[Dmitry Streblechenko]

I don't think anything can be proved either way.
While creating a fake read receipt and planting it on the right date in his
PST store is not something a regular user would do, you won't need a
brilliant developer to do that. Juts about any MAPI developer could do it in
less than a day. I could probably write a script to do that using Redemption
in 30 minutes or less.
And if the sender and receiver names are the same on the paper copy, and he
claims that was because he sent it to himself for record keeping, the guy is
really dumb. Why couldn't he produce a message sent to *you*? I would
imagine it should still be in his Sent Items folder.
Just out of curiosity (I am obvisously not a lawyer) - why does a read
receipt matter in a case like that? Even if you saw something, that does not
mean you consent to it, unless your original contract (which you signed)
stipulates that he can change the contract terms at any moment and simply
notify you. That would be highly unusual. And even if that were the case,
the contract would have to stipulate the notification mechanism (certified
mail, etc).
Even if he really sent a message and received read notification back, that
does not mean that the message was read by *you* and not somebody else
walking past your computer.

--
Dmitry Streblechenko (MVP)
http://www.dimastr.com/
OutlookSpy - Outlook, CDO
and MAPI Developer Tool
-

 

[JP]

Even the headers? A completely spoofed email? I'm interested to see
how it this turns out. And would a read receipt constitute an
agreement to a contract? That's a legal issue I don't want to touch.

--JP