In the digital era, lawsuits against a departing employee often involve claims and allegations arising from employees\u2019 computer fraud and\/or misconduct.\u00a0 An issue that courts must frequently tackle in these cases, particularly when an employee works remotely and\/or is located in a different jurisdiction than the one where the computers that he or she accessed are located, is whether a court where the employer and its computers are located may exercise personal jurisdiction over the employee who resides and worked for the employer in a different state.<\/p>\n
In December 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found personal jurisdiction in Connecticut where a party knowingly accessed computer servers located within that state.\u00a0 MacDermid, Inc. v. Deiter<\/em>, No. 11-5388-cv (2d Cir., December 26, 2012).\u00a0 This holding may help empower employers to litigate in their home states.<\/p>\n In MacDermid<\/em>, the Plaintiff corporation had its principal place of business in Connecticut and,\u00a0though its Canadian subsidiary, employed Deiter, a resident and citizen of Ontario, Canada.\u00a0After Deiter learned that her employment would soon be terminated, she used her MacDermid computer in Canada to forward allegedly confidential and proprietary MacDermid data from her MacDermid email account to her personal email account.\u00a0 Deiter had to access MacDermid\u2019s computer servers in Connecticut both to access the information and to email the files.<\/p>\n MacDermid sued Deiter in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut, alleging unauthorized access and misuse of a computer system in violation of Connecticut\u2019s Computer Crimes statute and misappropriation of trade secrets.\u00a0MacDermid alleged personal jurisdiction based on the Connecticut long-arm statute.\u00a0 Deiter moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.<\/p>\n The District Court found no personal jurisdiction under the Connecticut long-arm statute, finding that that Deiter had merely sent an email \u201cfrom one computer in Canada to another computer in Canada\u201d when she sent the MacDermid files to her personal email.\u00a0 It accordingly granted Deiter\u2019s motion to dismiss.<\/p>\n The Second Circuit reversed, finding that the Connecticut long-arm statute applied to persons outside the state who remotely accessed computers within the state and, accordingly finding jurisdiction under the long-arm statute.\u00a0The Court then considered whether the exercise of personal jurisdiction over Deiter accorded with due process.\u00a0 In assessing this question, the Second Circuit noted that a Connecticut court has personal jurisdiction over a nonresident foreigner who has \u201cpurposefully directed his activities at residents of the forum\u201d where \u201cthe litigation results from alleged injuries that arise out of or relate to those activities.\u201d\u00a0 Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz<\/em>, 471 U.S. 462, 472 (1985) (internal quotation marks omitted).<\/p>\n The key fact for the Second Circuit in finding purposeful availment was Deiter\u2019s knowledge that the servers to which she gained access were located in Connecticut.\u00a0 The Court acknowledged that most computer users are unaware of the physical whereabouts of servers to which they connect while conducting internet activity.\u00a0 In such cases, a computer user might not be found to have directed his activity toward the state in which the servers are located.\u00a0 However, here, the fact that Deiter knowingly directed her allegedly tortious conduct toward MacDermid\u2019s Connecticut servers made the exercise of personal jurisdiction appropriate.<\/p>\n The Second Circuit in MacDermid<\/em>, then, may grant employers in Connecticut and potentially within the rest of the Circuit a powerful tool to litigate in their home fora.\u00a0 Under the Second Circuit\u2019s analysis, as long as an employee is made aware of the state in which a company\u2019s servers are housed, if an employee improperly accesses those servers then personal jurisdiction over the employee in that state does not run afoul of due process.\u00a0 In other states that have long-arm statutes similar to Connecticut\u2019s, then, MacDermid<\/em> may open the door for employers to bring computer-related claims on their home turf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the digital era, lawsuits against a departing employee often involve claims and allegations arising from employees\u2019 computer fraud and\/or misconduct.\u00a0 An issue that courts must frequently tackle in these cases, particularly when an employee works remotely and\/or is located in a different jurisdiction than the one where the computers that he or she accessed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_mo_disable_npp":"no","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[27,28,25,16,29],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n