Facts

An online blog named Friends for Fullerton's Future (FFF) caught the attention of the City of Fullerton's officials when it began posting documents that were exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Act and had not been publicly disclosed, including internal police investigation records and excerpts from attorney-client privileged emails. One of the documents detailed how former City Manager Joe Felz received a ride home from City's police officers after drinking and crashing his car on election night. The City filed a lawsuit against FFF and its two bloggers, Joshua Ferguson and David Curlee, alleging defendants downloaded thousands of privileged records from the City's "Dropbox" account without authorization and published some of those records. The City also alleged defendants violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California State's Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act.

PLAINTIFF'S CONTENTIONS: Plaintiff contended defendants illegally accessed and downloaded privileged records from its Dropbox account, including but not limited to internal police misconduct records. Plaintiff sought an injunction requiring defendants to preserve the already downloaded records and preventing them from further accessing records from the City's networks and File Sharing accounts and from publishing the illegally-obtained materials. Plaintiff contended defendants violated anti-hacking laws when they accessed and downloaded privileged documents from its Dropbox using links and passwords not shared with them.

DEFENDANTS CONTENTIONS: Defendants denied all of the contentions. Defendants contended the City staff were placing documents in cityoffullerton.com/outbox, a shortcut to an unsecure shared file account. Defendants contended the documents were not stolen because the website was not secure and the documents were easily accessible without circumventing access controls.

Settlement Discussions

As a result of an internal investigation and discussion with defendants, the City found the documents were accessible to and were downloaded by defendants because the City mistakenly did not adequately restrict access to some of the folders within its Dropbox accounts and passwords were re-used. The critical component of the settlement was defendants returning the documents they downloaded from the City's Dropbox account, preventing any further publication.

Result

The case settled for $350,000, $230,000 of which was attorneys' fees, contingent upon defendants returning all of the documents downloaded and wiping their electronic devices of any copies.

Other Information

The City obtained a preliminary injunction against defendants and the trial court denied the defendants' anti-SLAPP motion. Both orders were appealed.