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Case Law - Florida

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Coleman v. Morgan Stanley
Plaintiff's motion for adverse interference instruction was granted due to destruction of emails and non-compliance with previous court orders.

Menke v. Broward County Sch. Bd., 916 So.2d 8 (Fla. Ct. App. 2005).
Alleging a teacher exchanged sexually explicit e-mails with students and made derogatory comments about school staff, a school board sought to compel production of all computers in the teacher's household. Additionally, the Board sought to have its own computer expert search the computers in the expert's laboratory for the alleged messages between the teacher and students. Objecting to the order, the teacher declared the production would violate his right against self-incrimination, his right of privacy, and would disclose privileged communications. An administrative law judge ordered production of the computers and sought to protect the teacher's right by allowing the teacher to have his own expert present at the inspection and by requiring the Board's expert "not to retain, provide, or discuss with counsel for the Board the existence of any communications which might be deemed privileged." In quashing the order, the court declared it was overbroad and would allow, "an agent of the Board carte blanche authorization to examine the hard drives it will duplicate from the computers [the teacher] has been ordered to produce. Combing through every byte, every word, every sentence, every data fragment, and every document, including those that are privileged or that may be part of privileged communications, looking for 'any data' that may evidence communication between [the teacher] and his accusers."

Four Seasons Hotel v. Consorcio Barr
Case involved theft of proprietary computer information where in computer forensics played a role in determining the theft.

Southern Diagnostic Assoc. v. Bencosme, 833 So. 2d 801 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2002).
The appellate court quashed an order against Southern Diagnostic, a non-party in an insurance suit brought by Bencosme, compelling discovery of certain contents of its computer system. The appellate court held that that trial court's order was overly broad, setting no parameters or limitations on the inspection of Southern Diagnostic's computer system and make no account that the computer system contained confidential and privileged information. The appellate court directed the trial court to craft a narrowly tailored order that accomplishes the purposes of the discovery requests and provides for confidentiality.

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