United States v. Ziegler, 456 F.3d 1138 (9th Cir. 2006)

After the owner of Frontline Processing contacted the FBI with a tip that an employee, Brian Ziegler, had accessed child pornography on the Internet from a workplace computer, Frontline entered Ziegler’s locked office and made a copy of the computer’s hard drive, which was provided to the FBI. Forensic examiners at the FBI discovered many images of child pornography on the hard drive. A federal grand jury handed down a three-count indictment charging Ziegler with receipt and possession of child pornography and receipt of obscene material in violation of federal law. Ziegler pled not guilty and filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained from the hard drive, arguing the FBI had violated his Fourth Amendment rights by directing Frontline to search his computer. The Ninth Circuit affirmed the trial court’s order denying the motion to suppress on the ground that Ziegler had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the Internet files he accessed from Frontline’s computer. Citing California law, the Court held that “social norms suggest that employees are not entitled to privacy in the use of workplace computers, which belong to their employers and pose significant dangers in terms of diminished productivity and even employer liability.” The Court further observed that employer monitoring of company computers is “largely an assumed practice” and that a “disseminated computeruse policy is entirely sufficient to defeat any expectation [of privacy] that an employee might nonetheless harbor.” Compare Hernandez v. Hillsides, Inc., 2006 WL 2640234 (Cal. Ct. App. 2006) (residential facility for abused children failed to show on summary judgment that employees had diminished expectation of privacy in their office); cf. Leon v. IDX Sys. Corp., 2006 WL 2684512 (9th Cir. 2006) (dismissal of employment claims and $65,000 in sanctions upheld where former employee deleted 2,200 files from employer’s laptop computer).

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Photo of Tony Oncidi Tony Oncidi

Anthony J. Oncidi is the co-chair of the Labor & Employment Law Department and heads the West Coast Labor & Employment group in the firm’s Los Angeles office.

Tony represents employers and management in all aspects of labor relations and employment law, including…

Anthony J. Oncidi is the co-chair of the Labor & Employment Law Department and heads the West Coast Labor & Employment group in the firm’s Los Angeles office.

Tony represents employers and management in all aspects of labor relations and employment law, including litigation and preventive counseling, wage and hour matters, including class actions, wrongful termination, employee discipline, Title VII and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, executive employment contract disputes, sexual harassment training and investigations, workplace violence, drug testing and privacy issues, Sarbanes-Oxley claims and employee raiding and trade secret protection. A substantial portion of Tony’s practice involves the defense of employers in large class actions, employment discrimination, harassment and wrongful termination litigation in state and federal court as well as arbitration proceedings, including FINRA matters.

Tony is recognized as a leading lawyer by such highly respected publications and organizations as the Los Angeles Daily JournalThe Hollywood Reporter, and Chambers USA, which gives him the highest possible rating (“Band 1”) for Labor & Employment.  According to Chambers USA, clients say Tony is “brilliant at what he does… He is even keeled, has a high emotional IQ, is a great legal writer and orator, and never gives up.” Other clients report:  “Tony has an outstanding reputation” and he is “smart, cost effective and appropriately aggressive.” Tony is hailed as “outstanding,” particularly for his “ability to merge top-shelf lawyerly advice with pragmatic business acumen.” He is highly respected in the industry, with other commentators lauding him as a “phenomenal strategist” and “one of the top employment litigators in the country.”

“Tony is the author of the treatise titled Employment Discrimination Depositions (Juris Pub’g 2020; www.jurispub.com), co-author of Proskauer on Privacy (PLI 2020), and, since 1990, has been a regular columnist for the official publication of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the State Bar of California and the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

Tony has been a featured guest on Fox 11 News and CBS News in Los Angeles. He has been interviewed and quoted by leading national media outlets such as The National Law JournalBloomberg News, The New York Times, and Newsweek and Time magazines. Tony is a frequent speaker on employment law topics for large and small groups of employers and their counsel, including the Society for Human Resource Management (“SHRM”), PIHRA, the National CLE Conference, National Business Institute, the Employment Round Table of Southern California (Board Member), the Council on Education in Management, the Institute for Corporate Counsel, the State Bar of California, the California Continuing Education of the Bar Program and the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills Bar Associations. He has testified as an expert witness regarding wage and hour issues as well as the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and has served as a faculty member of the National Employment Law Institute. He has served as an arbitrator in an employment discrimination matter.

Tony is an appointed Hearing Examiner for the Los Angeles Police Commission Board of Rights and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law and a guest lecturer at USC Law School and a guest lecturer at UCLA Law School.