California high court to hear mass e-mail case

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By Scarlet Pruitt

(IDG) -- The California Supreme Court agreed this week to review a lower court's decision that effectively allowed companies to sue parties that send unwanted e-mail to their employees, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group.

The case concerns former Intel Corp. employee Ken Hamidi, who was sued by the chip maker after he sent six mass e-mail messages to Intel employees, complaining about the way the company treated its workers.

Intel won an injunction against Hamidi in November 1998, claiming that he was flooding its systems and trespassing on its property. Hamidi appealed the case with support from the foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, claiming that his right to free speech was violated.

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Last December, the Third Appellate District Court of California ruled (download PDF) that sending the unwanted e-mail was an illegal trespass, citing a legal argument called "trespass the chattels."

The doctrine prohibits others from interfering with personal property. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the interference must be intentional physical contact with someone else's property that results in substantial interference or damage to the property. But civil liberties groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, fear that this doctrine, if applied to the digital world, would open the door for any number of claimants who contend that an unwanted e-mail or search-engine crawl served as a trespass on their property.

No one from Intel was immediately available for comment on the case.

Opening briefs for the California Supreme Court case will be due about April 28, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.