Could Alex Jones&#39; lawyer have claimed back the data he should have produced in discovery? As I understand it from the news and some blogs: Alex Jones and his lawyers were asked during discovery to provide any message from his cellphone that did mention the Sandy Hook massacre. He claimed he did not have any and he did not produce any. Then his lawyer provided the plaintiffs' lawyer with some electronic documents. But it seems that he botched it and gave way more information than he intended to. The plaintiffs' lawyer warned Jones' lawyer about that. Jones' lawyer had ten days to formally acknowledge the transfer was a mistake, and to ask the plaintiffs' lawyer to ignore and delete the data. Jones' lawyer failed to do anything. Ten days after the error was notified to Jones' lawyer, and due to the lack of answer, the plaintiffs' lawyer was entitled to use all that was provided to him. That data included the record from Jones' phone, showing that he had messages related to the Sandy Hook massacre that he had failed to disclose. My question is: if the plaintiffs' lawyer had noticed those messages (that should have been delivered to him more than a year ago), could he have kept them and used them in trial even if Jones' lawyer had requested him to delete the data transferred to him? Or would a request from Jones' lawyer have prevented him from doing that?
This is a civil case in Texas. See Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 193.3(d) and guidance. In the current PDF May 1 2022 those are on pages 199 and 121 respectively and I reproduce them below. My understanding is that defense counsel (D) could have asserted privilege when Plaintiffs' counsel (P) originally told him about the link. In doing so, D would have identified the inadvertently produced material and the privilege asserted. Then P would be obliged to promptly return (or delete as it's digital) that material and any copies. Inevitably in this case P would object to the claim of privilege over any material potentially or apparently 'responsive' to discovery (e.g. a folder called &quot;digital copy of defendant's phone&quot; or texts mentioning keywords). The judge would hear from both parties and make a ruling on the material. In reality, D did not do that. Also, D made no contemporaneous objections to P's request to admit particular material in court (note P did not request the admission of the entire trove, only particular pieces of it). Instead, the day after the &quot;Perry Mason moment&quot;, D filed an 'emergency motion of protection' and a request for a mistrial. The judge denied both. D asked for another ten days to review the material. The judge said no to ten days but said D could have a D a day to make a start and then they could discuss whether more were needed. She said she would not make a blanket protection order over the entire trove without knowledge of what was in it. hearing here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKbAmNwbiMk Incidentally, P claimed there was an earlier inadvertent production of some other material and in relation to that material rule 193.3(d) was followed by both parties. (from 7mins in that clip.) Texas Rules of Civil Procedure 193.3(d) Privilege not waived by production. A party who produces material or information without intending to waive a claim of privilege does not waive that claim under these rules or the Rules of Evidence if - within ten days or a shorter time ordered by the court, after the producing party actually discovers that such production was made - the producing party amends the response, identifying the material or information produced and stating the privilege asserted. If the producing party thus amends the response to assert a privilege, any party who has obtained the specific material or information must promptly return the specified material or information and any copies pending any ruling by the court denying the privilege. (guidance) Rule 193.3(d) is a new provision that allows a party to assert a claim of privilege to material or information produced inadvertently without intending to waive the privilege. The provision is commonly used in complex cases to reduce costs and risks in large document Page 122 productions. The focus is on the intent to waive the privilege, not the intent to produce the material or information. A party who fails to diligently screen documents before producing them does not waive a claim of privilege. This rule is thus broader than Tex. R. Evid. 511 and overturns Granada Corp. v. First Court of Appeals, 844 S.W.2d 223 (Tex. 1992), to the extent the two conflict. The ten-day period (which may be shortened by the court) allowed for an amended response does not run from the production of the material or information but from the party’s first awareness of the mistake. To avoid complications at trial, a party may identify prior to trial the documents intended to be offered, thereby triggering the obligation to assert any overlooked privilege under this rule. A trial court may also order this procedure. This rule imposes no duty to supplement or amend deposition testimony. The only duty to supplement deposition testimony is provided in Rule 195.6. Any party can request a hearing in which the court will resolve issues brought up in objections or withholding statements. The party seeking to avoid discovery has the burden of proving the objection or privilege.
Hacking into a computer owned by someone else and accessing the data stored on it without permission is a misdemeanor according to StGB 202a (de|en). But only if it's successful. So a failed attempt isn't a misdemeanor yet. When you notice that someone might have committed a criminal offence (regardless of whether you are a victim or just a witness), then the usual procedure is to report it to the police. If they consider the crime serious enough to investigate, then they will request the identity from the ISP. But the copyright lawsuits which are filed in bulk by law firms working with media companies are not crime reports. They are civil lawsuits. A civil lawsuit is when someone had a tangible damage because of something someone else did, and now they want money in compensation. When there is no damage, then there is nothing to sue for. So when you want a judge to file an injunction to force an ISP to give them the identity of one of their users, then you would first have to explain to them how much financial damage you had because of that person and that this is enough damage to make it worth everyone's time. That might be quite challenging for nothing but a failed SSH login attempt. But it might be possible if a single person made so many login attempts that it incurred you non-negligible bandwidth cost or even caused a denial-of-service.
If there's a reason to believe that your machine has data that would be relevant to a lawsuit, then yes, it is subject to inspection under Fed. R. Civ. P. 34: A party may serve on any other party a request ... to produce and permit the requesting party or its representative to inspect, copy, test, or sample the following items in the responding party's possession, custody, or control: ... any designated documents or electronically stored information—including writings, drawings, graphs, charts, photographs, sound recordings, images, and other data or data compilations—stored in any medium from which information can be obtained either directly or, if necessary, after translation by the responding party into a reasonably usable form. So if there's a lawsuit where there becomes a question about what you downloaded from the network, then it's quite plausible that your device could be demanded or subpoenaed. But that's not the same thing as &quot;forfeiting&quot; your device. The normal procedure in such a case would be that the agency's lawyers would notify you of the demand, and you would take your device to an ESI expert, who would make a digital image of the device's hard drive. The parties would then fight about what portions of that image they are allowed to access, but you would have your device again while that was going on.
The tort for this kind of activity is called public disclosure of private facts, and almost every U.S. state recognizes that this tort is invalid under the First Amendment in the absence of a legal duty not to disclose of the type existing between an attorney and client, or a psychotherapist and a patient, or a contractual non-disclosure agreement, that does not exist between roommates. There is nothing illegal about your roommate's conduct. Your best move at this point is to take responsibility for your own conduct, to repent and to convince the world that you're doing your best to get on the straight and narrow going forward. If your former roommate insisted on payment for not disclosing the information, that would be extortion, but there is nothing wrong with going ahead and disseminating it without trying to obtain something of value from you for not doing so.
There's also the matter of admitting its over is not admitting he lost. Trump could be saying privately that he thinks all possible attempts to contest were blocked, but that since almost all were blocked for non-evidentiary reasons, he can still hold that had the cases progressed to the evidentiary portion the outcomes would have been different. From an apolitical example, just because someone cannot be tried because of statute of limitations, doesn't mean they didn't do the crime... just that the prosecution didn't charge them in a timely manner. The prosecutor, upon getting the decision from the judge that the trial won't even happen, could say to himself or a client &quot;It's all over&quot; while still believing they had the guy they accused dead to rights for the crime. There is further issues with the Politico report that could negate this as evidence of Mens Rea (the first matter is for some reason the link to the report is not working for me, so pardon my ignorance of the details in the article). I'm supposing that Donald Trump did not tell the reporter this story himself, but rather a likely unnamed source that is close to Trump. Here the problem in court would be a matter of evidence (Trump would say he never said this... Politico can't refute that claim by saying we know a guy who says you did... the guy who said Trump said it could testify, but as of yet, we don't have any identity at this stage in the game... the burden of proof is on those who say Donald Trump said something that He himself says he never said or doesn't recall saying. The net result is that the statement attributed to Donald Trump would not be evidence to Mens Rea in any prosectuion right now because there is no specific person attributing the hearsay statement to Trump when Trump denies saying it (it is not hearsay to introduce statements agains opposition's intrest at trial, but the testimony to such evidence needs to be made by a person who was privy to the statement when it happened (they don't need to be the party that the comment was made to... just had to have a valid way of hearing it first hand). With all verbal statements, the larger context also applies, so access to the larger conversation as well as Trump's state of mind in the moment he said it to help infer ultimate meaning. Did Trump think he actually lost because he accepted the results OR did he think lost because he was cheated and denied a chance to be heard in court or have his evidence considered beyond pretrial determinations? The quote could be said in either context and mean totally different things as evidence to the two specific crimes you accuse him of. It's not something to dismiss off hand, but at this stage it is also not a smoking gun. Remember the classic Twilight Zone episode &quot;To Serve Man&quot; and that a single lone statement can have multiple meanings... assuming the most appealing meaning can have disasterous results when the statement is put into a broader context.
My impression, and the plausible explanation in the absence of the actual facts, is that this was something that the attorney agreed to, in order to allow a skittish client to reveal information pursuant to a favorable plea agreement. The police probably insisted that the client be handcuffed to someone while doing this to prevent the client from fleeing. The attorney probably offered to do the job instead of a police officer, to be able to provide advice to his client and keep his client calm enough to do it, which might not have happened (sacrificing the favorable plea deal that the attorney negotiated) if someone else were in that role.
Revealing such information might be an example of an Invasion of Privacy tort, specifically &quot;Disclosure of Private Facts&quot;. Not all US states recognize this tort. The Findlaw page on &quot;What is Invasion of privacy&quot; says: Public disclosure of private facts laws protect your right to keep the details of your private life from becoming public information. For example, publicizing facts about a person's health, sexual conduct, or financial troubles is likely an invasion of privacy. While state laws vary, the general elements of this tort are as follows: 1.The defendant publicized a matter regarding the private life of the plaintiff; 2.The publicized matter would be highly offensive to a reasonable person; and 3.It is not of a legitimate concern to the public. To publicize a private matter, laws generally require that the private information is disseminated in such a way that it is substantially certain to become public knowledge A linked sub-page of the above says: Generally, disclosure to one or two people does not constitute a public disclosure unless there is an implication that the information should be spread around. The Digital Media law Project's page on &quot;Publication of Private Facts&quot; says much the same thing. The 1976 law review article &quot;The First Amendment Privilege and Public Disclosure of Private Facts&quot; by Samuel Soopper Discusses this tort in some detail, although it mostly focuses on publications by the news media where first amendment issues are in play. It seems as if such a tort case might be hard to bring because of the small number of people to whom the fact was disclosed. A claim for Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress might fit such a situation, but this would depend on the specific facts of the case, and again, on the state where the issue would be tried. In any case, this would not be a criminal action, and a lawyer would have to be consulted to better determine if a civil action could be pursued.
Once you withdrew the complaint without prejudice, any statute of limitations benefit you obtained from filing the lawsuit evaporated. From a legal perspective, it is as if you never filed at all, except that the lawsuit that was filed proves that you had notice of the claim at the time you filed, so you cannot take advantage of any "discovery rule" that allows a statute of limitations to start running from the date that you knew or should have known of your right to file a lawsuit. In all likelihood, the statute of limitations has now run, although that would depend upon the jurisdiction in which it was filed. Some jurisdictions toll the statute of limitations during a period of minority, but that tolling might very well be insufficient to allow the claim to be filed 20 years later.