Comment by ehe78qhe
19 hours ago
It would create a burden on businesses to keep all records indefinitely (most businesses only keep around 7 years of most records). This has a monetary cost to it that would disadvantage mature businesses against younger ones.
It's not just a burden for the immediate parties. Having the ability to dispute rights and obligation going back indeterminate amounts of time adds risk to the rights and obligations of untold numbers of third-parties; everybody's interests become more interdependent and intertwined the more time has elapsed. One of the important functions of a legal system is to settle rights and obligations. Settled, transparent rights and obligations are also integral to notions of fairness and justice, so it's not a zero sum thing that statutes of limitations sacrifice fairness for cold transactional efficiency.
In an era of digital records keeping, this does not sound impossible.
It's not just about storage. It's about fairness and creating an environment where people can transact in a relatively stable and predictable manner.
It is inherently unfair and destabilizing if people can sit on alleged wrongs, violations of agreements, etc. indefinitely, either intentionally or because they were ignorant or negligent, and then raise those wrongs in the court system any time they choose to.
A statute of limitations basically says "take your rights and obligations seriously and when you have a dispute over them with another party, raise it in a reasonable amount of time or forever hold your peace".
Even in the era of digital records it has a monetary cost; keeping decades of emails, documents, audio and video recordings is not free. I have friends working for software businesses that make many millions per customer just managing and retaining documents.