410 F.2d 701 (D.C. Cir. 1969)
Plaintiff (a former senator) sued Defendants (his former staff members) for conversion. Plaintiff alleged that, on the night in question, Defendants removed certain documents from his files, made photocopies, and returned the documents to the files before start of next day’s business. Later, Defendants provided those photocopies to newspaper journalists.
The court ruled against Plaintiff by holding that no conversion occurred because the actual documents that Defendants had removed from his files were returned undamaged before they were missed. Thus, to the extent that the value of the property in question (i.e., the documents) existed in its use, no substantial interference had occurred. The court further held that the information and ideas contained in the documents were not a form of property protected by the law of conversion.
Reference Desk
Dow Corning Corp. v. Xiao, No. 11-10008-BC (E.D. Mich. Sept. 19, 2011)
Under Michigan common law, a defendant is not liable for merely receiving information that has been tortiously obtained by another, even if the defendant has knowledge of the impropriety of the initial intrusion. See, e.g., Mills, 536 N.W.2d at 832-33. In Mills, for example, the plaintiffs alleged that the defendant had tortiously intruded on their seclusion by obtaining information about the plaintiffs’ intent to undergo abortions from a garbage dumpster in the clinic’s parking lot. Id. at 832. The plaintiffs, acknowledging that a third-party initially obtained the information, not the defendant, nevertheless argued “that liability still may be imposed under an intrusion theory because [the defendant] admitted in her deposition that she was aware of the source of the information. . . .” Id. at 833. The trial court summarily dismissed this argument and the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed. Id. In support of its ruling, the court cited Pearson v. Dodd, 410 F.2d 701 (D.C. Cir. 1969), in which the plaintiff similarly sought to hold the defendants liable for the receipt of information from a third-party who, in turn, had obtained the information through an improper intrusion. See Mills, 536 N.W.2d at 833 (citing Dodd, 410 F.2d at 704-05). Summarily dismissing the claim in Dodd, Judge Skelly Wright wrote:
Although appellee’s complaint charges that appellants aided and abetted in the removal of the documents, the undisputed facts . . . established only that appellants received copies of the documents knowing that they had been removed without authorization. If we were to hold appellants liable for invasion of privacy on these facts, we would establish the proposition that one who receives information from an intruder, knowing it has been obtained by improper intrusion, is guilty of a tort. In an untried and developing area of tort law, we are not prepared to go so far. A person approached by an eavesdropper with an offer to share in the information gathered through the eavesdropping would perhaps play the nobler part should he spurn the offer and shut his ears. However, it seems to us that at this point it would place too great a strain on human weakness to hold one liable in damages who merely succumbs to temptation and listens.
410 F.2d at 705 (footnote omitted), quoted in part in Mills, 536 N.W.2d at 833. The Michigan Court of Appeals in Mills, decided twenty-six years after Dodd, was similarly unwilling to impose liability on a defendant for a third-party’s initial intrusion, writing: “This rationale is directly applicable to the instant case and persuades us that [the defendant’s] mere receipt of the information from [a third-party], even with knowledge of its source, is insufficient to subject her to liability under an intrusion theory.” 536 N.W.2d at 833; see also Doe v. Peterson, No. 2:09-cv-13138, 2011 WL 1515029, at *10 (E.D. Mich. March 24, 2011) (holding operators of website which posted explicit pictures of persons without their consent were not liable for intrusion upon seclusion under Michigan law, since operators received images already obtained by third-parties).