Plaintiff worked primarily out of her home office, and was assigned a company-owned Mac laptop computer, until May 2003, when she was told that she would be converting to a Dell. Prior to transfering her work-related files from the Mac to the Dell, the plaintiff deleted her personal files from the Mac, including notes and e-mails she had sent to her attorneys regarding the action. Years later, the defendant hired a forensic consultant, who was able to restore portions of the “deleted” files. Despite the general rule that “an employee has no expectation in workplace computer files where company guidelines and policy explicitly inform the employee that no expectation of privacy exists,” the magistrate, affirmed by the district court, concluded that this does not “‘end the issue’ because the lack of enforcement by MWC of its computer usage policy created a ‘false sense of security’ which ‘lulled’ employees into believing that the policy would not be enforced.” As distinguished from many of the other cases, the fact that plaintiff was working from a home computer was significant. “Here, Plaintiff’s laptops were not connected to MWC’s computer server and were not located in MWC’s offices; thus, MWC was not able to monitor Plaintiff’s activity on her home-based laptops or intercept her e-mails at any time. In fact, in order for MWC to access the documents on Plaintiff’s laptops, they would have to be either physically transported to MWC’s offices or someone from MWC would have to examine them at Plaintiff’s home. When she did have to return her laptop, she deleted all personal files. Thus, it was reasonable for her to believe that the e-mails she sent and the personal documents she stored on her laptops were confidential.” See Curto v. Medical World Communications, No.03CV6327, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29387 (E.D.N.Y. May 15, 2006).
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