I am assuming that Liberty U will demand all the thousands of emails sent and received from the account they paid for, covering a period of years. They will not enumerate which ones they want, because they cannot know of most of them. Thus my expectation of a trustee to sort them out.
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Discovery is limited to requests that are, or are reasonably aimed at, eliciting admissible evidence. So a broad “Give us all your emails!” request won’t work, but a “Give us all your emails with the pool boy!” probably would.
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One thing I failed to pick up on until just now: Liberty is demanding the return of a specific laptop identified by serial number (graph 118). If JerryJr wipes the laptop before returning it, what liability does he face? That could be a treasure trove, especially since it’s a windows laptop.
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Well it happens that I have experience with people who have erased hard drives, and the ultimate penalty for that is that the jury gets instructed that they can decide that means the eraser did it because what was erased was some really bad shit for them, legally speaking. Plus attorney fees and sanctions and such to the other side for having to litigate the erasure.
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OK, that laptop makes Liberty’s position a bit stronger than I had thought.
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Biberty Liberty U, appears to have a strong claim on the return of “confidential” information claim, but no obvious damages. If I have your confidential info and am not doing anything with it, you have not been harmed. At best, you can get a court to make me give it back and/or purge it.
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That’s not the concern. It’s what might be on that laptop. Surface Pro 3 is an older laptop. Introduced June 2014, and discontinued November 2016. Unless Lib U is in the habit of issueing executives used laptops, he’s had that laptop for a very long time, and it is really hard to completely delete things from windows systems even if you know what you’re doing.
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The only one who could ever love me
Was the pool boy of the son of a preacher man!
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Nah, it’s literally what’s on that computer (and other devices) that is the basis for the contract cause of action.
I LOVE THIS.
Tutu should be a little fluffier.
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You mean, “since Sr. was recognized by the Devil as his own.”
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If they’re asking for the return of the laptop because it (allegedly) has their confidential information on it, does the return of a wiped laptop suffice, assuming for the moment that they have other copies of all the alleged confidential information? That would address the disclosure issue as effectively as the return of an unwiped laptop, it seems. (Although I expect that the reason they want the laptop returned is to go looking for other dirt, but they can’t openly say that.)
(And of course as a sometime computer person I’m aware that there’s no way to guarantee falwell hasn’t retained a copy of the alleged confidential information without searching all of his gear and much of the internet…)
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Wiping devices after litigation has ensued, or even been threatened, is a supremely bad idea. We call that spoliation of evidence, and it means your jury is probably going to be instructed that they can assume whatever was on the wiped device was some deeply incriminatingly bad stuff. Plus, you’ll get fined for discovery abuse.
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Liberty Biberty is claiming, in part, that Jerry insisted on using a non-Liberty email address, with the implication being that they don’t have copies of all that stuff.
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The confidential information claim is bullshit. It’s the kind of garbage every former employer asserts when they want to punish a former employee with a lawsuit because the mere allegation of “confidential information” makes damn near every judge in the country turn into a useless toadstool. Who gives a shit if Jerry Jr. has a “confidential” memo or whatever somewhere in an archived email?
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I’m confused here. We’re not at discovery yet, so is the laptop evidence, or is it just their property that they say they want back?
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OT, but another popcorn time,too.
Justice Department Sues Trump Crony Roger Stone For Alleged $2 Million In Unpaid Taxes | HuffPost
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Both. The devices are (allegedly) Liberty Biberty’s property, and the information on them is (allegedly) confidential information that is discoverable in order to prove that the dastardly Jerry Jr. has Liberty Biberty’s “confidential information,” which has in some unexplained manner caused Liberty Biberty tremendous harm despite the fact that they didn’t even bother to allege that Falwell was misusing the “confidential information” in some manner.
Seriously, “confidential information” lawsuits are a scam intended to punish former employees.
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Or anyone adjacent to them. (The magazine I once worked for received a few lawyer letters alleging we were committing theft of trade secrets for talking to former employers of the supposed trade-secret owners, had to respond. Also similar letters from the DoD, and a phone call telling us to stand by until uniformed service members could arrive to take custody of the classified material we supposedly had.)
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If the laptop was paid for by Liberty, then they are entitled to its return immediately at terminatinon of employment. JerryJr being the sort of idiot who would do personal stuff on an employer computer, might not want to return it since he can’t be sure he’s completely deleted any personal stuff.
I will note that Surface 3 Pros were last made in 2016, so it is quite possible JerryJr’s usage of that laptop overlaps with the time he was negotiating the rather unusually financed sale of a donated workout facility from Liberty U to Ben Crosswhite.
Lib U also has an interest in not seeing their former exec’s business docs or emails getting out into the wild. What if he sells the laptop? How can they be confident it was properly wiped before sale?
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The only one who could clean my filters
Was the pool boy of a preacher man
The only one who could balance the ph
Was the pool boy of the preacher man
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Did Falwell Jr. get his theology degree off of the back of a match book?
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