A QUESTION OF ETHICS
Intel Corporation has an e-mail system for its employees. Ken Hamidi. a former Intel employee, sent a series of six e-mail messages to 35,000 Intel employees over a twenty-one-month period. In the messages, Hamidi criticized the company's labor practices and urged employees to leave the company. Intel sought a court order to stop the e-mail campaign, arguing that Hamidi's actions constituted a trespass to chattels (personal property) because the e-mail significantly interfered with productivity, thus causing economic damage. The state trial court granted Intel's motion for summary judgment, and ordered Hamidi to stop sending messages. When the case reached the California Supreme Court, however, the court held that under California law, the tort of trespass to chattels required some evidence of injury to the plaintiff's personal property. Because Hamidi's e-mail had neither damaged the Intel's computer system nor impaired its functioning, the court ruled that Hamidi's actions did not amount to a trespass to chattels. The court did not reject the idea that trespass theory could apply to cyberspace. Rather, the court simply held that to succeed in a lawsuit for trespass to chattels, a plaintiff must demonstrate that some concrete harm resulted from the unwanted e-mail.
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