Christie v. Nat'l Inst. for Newman Studies
| Decision Date | 30 April 2019 |
| Docket Number | Civ. Action No. 16-6572 (FLW) |
| Parties | ROBERT C. CHRISTIE, Plaintiff, v. NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR NEWMAN STUDIES, et al., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey |
*NOT FOR PUBLICATION*
Plaintiff Robert C. Christie ("Plaintiff" or "Christie") was employed by defendant National Institute for Newman Studies ("NINS") as the company's Executive Director. When his employment ended, Plaintiff brought this suit, accusing NINS, and its two members of the board of directors, defendants Catherine Ryan and Drew Morgan (together with NINS, "Defendants"), of intentionally accessing, and deleting, his computer files and personal emails. Plaintiff alleges that Defendants' conduct violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act ("CFAC"), the New Jersey Computer Related Offenses Act ("NJCROA"), the Stored Communications Act ("SCA"), as well as invaded his privacy. In the instant matter, Defendants move for summary judgment on all counts, and Plaintiff cross-moves for partial summary judgment as to his invasion of privacy and SCA claims.1 Plaintiff also moves for summary judgment on Defendants' counterclaims. For the reasons set forth below, Defendants' motion is GRANTED, and Plaintiff's cross-motion for summary judgment as to his claims is DENIED. Plaintiff's motion for summary judgment as to Defendants' counterclaims is GRANTED in part and DENIED in part, as follows: Defendants' replevin and bailment counterclaims survives summary judgment; however, their unjust enrichment counterclaim is dismissed.
The facts recounted below are undisputed unless noted otherwise. In and around May 2015, Christie was hired as an Executive Director of the NINS, responsible for "the overall management of the operation" at the Institute. Defendants' Statement of Undisputed Facts ("Defs' Facts"), ¶ 4; Plaintiff's Statement of Undisputed Facts ("Pl.'s Facts"), ¶ 1. As the Executive Director, Christie supervised the entire NINS staff, as well as implemented employment and company policies. Defs' Facts, ¶¶ 5-7. In addition, in order to perform work related tasks, Christie was provided with a company desktop and laptop, both of which ran a version of Apple'sMacintosh OS X Operating system. Id. at ¶ 10. There is no dispute by Christie that these computers were owned by NINS, and at no time, did he have ownership of them. Id. at ¶¶ 11, 13. In fact, the same desktop computer had been used by a former executive director, Kevin Mongrain. Id. at ¶ 12.
NINS maintained e-mail accounts at the ninsdu.org domain, hosted by Google. Id. at ¶ 19. At the time Christie was employed by NINS, Mary Jo Dorsey was an administrator of NINS's email accounts, and she also provided general technical support to the NINS staff, including Christie. Id. at ¶¶ 16, 20. Christie was given an e-mail account at the ninsdu.org domain, rchristie@ninsdue.org, for work purposes. Id. at ¶ 21. In that connection, both of Christie's work computers, i.e., desktop and laptop, were configured to download e-mails sent to Christie's work e-mail address. See id. at ¶ 22.
Christie also maintains a personal e-mail account at r.christie@att.net, which was hosted by Yahoo!. Id. at ¶¶ 23-24. These e-mails were stored on one or more of Yahoo!'s remote servers. Id. at ¶ 24. In June 2015, soon after Christie assumed his role as the Director, he e-mailed Dorsey "to unravel a problem" he was having with his personal e-mail, as he could not open those emails on either of the Apple computers. See E-Mail between Christie and Dorsey, dated June 3, 2015. A few minutes later, Dorsey responded: Id. On that same day, the desktop computer was synchronized with the r.christie@att.net e-mail account, such that Christie was able to access his personal e-mails on his work desktop computer. Id. at ¶ 28; Christie Tr., T98: 7-10; Pl.'s Facts, ¶ 2 ().
During the first half of 2016, Christie ceased providing services to NINS, see Defs' Facts, ¶ 34, and he was terminated from employment in April 2016. Pl.'s Facts, ¶ 3. Upon termination, Dorsey disabled the rchristie@ninsdu.org e-mail address. Defs' Facts, ¶ 35. Thereafter, Christie and NINS entered into negations regarding a severance agreement. Christie negotiated with Ryan, NINS' co-founder and officer. Pl.'s Facts, ¶ 5. According to Christie, he and Ryan came to an agreement on the terms in early June 2015, and Christie received a draft of the settlement agreement on June 16, 2016.
Around the time of the negotiations, in June 2016, NINS needed certain information regrading the dates of an upcoming scholarly conference, the Newmanfest, that NINS was holding with Father Ian Ker. Defs' Facts, ¶ 38. NINS attempted to reach Christie to obtain that information. See Pl.'s Facts ¶ 6. In fact, on June 8, 2016, Kenneth Parker, the newly named interim executive director, who replaced Christie, emailed Christie and requested that he "confirm the dates Fr. Ker has agreed to be at NINS and lecture." Id. In the same email, Parker requestedChristie to return the NINS keys and MacAir laptop to the Institute.2 Id. Two days later, Christie responded that he was "working on the data that [he had] on the NINS [laptop,]" and that "it would take [him] some time to do so." Id. at ¶ 7. Parker, again, asked Christie to confirm "the dates that Fr. Ker arranged with [him.]" Id. at ¶ 11. On June 9, 2016, Christie responded that he would "ferret that information out and get it to [Parker] within the next few days, if not before then." Id. at ¶ 12.
Because NINS was unable to obtain certain information from Christie, on June 15, 2019, NINS held a staff meeting wherein the following people attended: McIntyre, Carol DeClaudio, Julia Morratto, Dorsey and Donna Lewis, and Father Morgan, who was a founding member and president of NINS. Id. at ¶ 15. Parker, located in England at the time of the meeting, also participated by video conferencing. At that meeting, McIntyre, as the office manager, sought and obtained permission from Parker and Father Morgan to access the NINS's desktop that was once used by Christie, in order to locate the dates on which Father Ker wascoming to NINS by reviewing Christie's work emails. See id. at ¶ 15; Defs' Facts, ¶ 40. According to McIntyre, Christie, in May 2016, provided McIntyre the password to the NINS desktop such that the incoming director could begin using that desktop. Defs' Facts, ¶¶ 36-37. However, Christie, on the other hand, claims that he provided his password to Father Morgan for a purpose unrelated to accessing the NINS desktop; according to Christie, the only password he gave was the one to the NINS' ADP account, and that password was the same one used for the desktop computer. Pl.'s Facts, ¶ 19.
To allow the search, Dorsey, first, re-enabled the rchristie@ninsdu.org e-mail account. Defs' Facts, ¶ 48. McIntyre unlocked the desktop with Christie's password, and proceeded to open Apple's e-mail application. Id. at ¶ 51. When the program opened, McIntyre was provided with a window including a listing for NINS, corresponding to the Christie's work e-mail account, as well as other listings. Id. at ¶ 52. McIntyre clicked on the work account to access e-mails from the rchristie@ninsdu.org address. Id. In order to search for particular e-mails, McIntyre typed in Ian Ker's name in the search box to attempt to retrieve relevant e-mails regarding the date that Father Ker could come to NINS. Id. at ¶ 53; Pl.'s Facts, ¶ 24. While McIntyre found the relevant information through the search, she also reviewed other e-mails in the process. Indeed, according to McIntyre, she identified an e-mail that contained negative comments about NINS from Christie toanother person; unbeknownst to McIntyre, this particular e-mail originated from Christie's personal account associated with the r.christie@att.net address. Id. at ¶ 56 (citing McIntyre Dep., T51:17-52:2). Thereafter, McIntyre stopped her search, which took approximately less than half an hour, and sent an e-mail to Parker requesting instructions.3 Id. at ¶ 57.
Meanwhile, Parker was in Birmingham, England. Id. at ¶ 58. On the evening of June 15, 2016, Birmingham time,4 Parker received an email from Christie with the scheduling information for Father Ker; however, according to Parker, because of the international time difference and other connectivity issues, Parker did not check his e-mail account until late in the afternoon, Birmingham time, on June 16, 2016. Id. at ¶¶ 59-61. Upon checking, Parker forwarded Christie's e-mail with the relevant dates to McIntyre at 6:50 p.m., or 1:50 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and in the same message, instructed McIntyre to forward the e-mail containing negative comments about NINS made by Christie to Father Morgan. Id. at ¶ 62.
After Christie left his employment at NINS, he took the work laptop with him, and it was not returned until sometime during the course of thislitigation. In addition to accusations of unauthorized access of the NINS desktop computer and his personal e-mail account, Christie claims that a large swath of files were deleted from the laptop. In that regard, he accuses NINS of remotely accessing the laptop for the purposes of deleting files. Moreover, Christie claims that because of NINS's unauthorized access of his files and the resultant e-mails that were reviewed by NINS, the severance agreement was ultimately terminated by NINS in bad faith. See Pl.'s Facts, ¶ 31. Indeed, on June 17, 2016, NINS's attorney, David J. McAllister, corresponded with Christie, and in his email to Plaintiff, McAllister stated that "[NINS's] decision to withdraw the offer was made in large part due to the content of [Christie's] emails to Father Ian Ker." Id. at ¶ 32 (...
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