Jury Finds Global E-Discovery Company Violated Criminal Computer Security Law when It Accessed Woman’s Emails

A Texas jury in a civil case has found that Consilio, which describes itself as “the global leader” in e-discovery, violated a Texas computer security criminal statute when it accessed the plaintiff’s computer without effective consent.

The jury also found Consilio negligent in downloading and destroying 10 years’ worth of emails and awarded $50,000 in damages to the plaintiff, Angelyn Olson of Maine, according to the woman’s attorneys and news reports.

Asked about the verdict, a spokesperson for Consilio said, “While we are disappointed in this verdict, we are confident we followed industry best practices in this matter.”

According to Olson’s lawyers, J. Robert Miller Jr. and Emily Copeland of Miller Copeland in Dallas, Consilio was hired in a Maine case in which Olson was a party. As part of that case, her lawyers agreed to provide Consilio with access to search her emails based on a small number of search terms.

Instead, the attorneys say, the company downloaded all of Olson’s emails for a 10-year period, including ones containing medical, counseling and financial information, Social Security numbers and attorney-client privileged materials.

When notified of the violation of the search agreement, and despite written notice to secure all the emails, Consilio destroyed them, the attorneys say, leaving Olson’s counsel no means of determining what Consilio did with the emails or with whom the company shared them.

According to Olson’s attorneys, Consilio defended its actions with the assertion that it had been impossible to do the search as it had agreed, based on key terms. But the attorneys say that another e-discovery company, Epiq, later managed to do the search in accord with the protocol.

Title 7, Chapter 33 of the Texas Penal Code, regarding breach of computer security, makes it a Class B misdemeanor for someone to knowingly access a computer without the owner’s effective consent.

In the Maine case in which the e-discovery had occurred, Olson was ordered to return $300,000 to a retired German law professor after allegedly taking advantage of his dementia and mispending some of his money while serving as caretaker of his summer home, according to a report in the Portland Press Herald.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.