Judge orders hard drive be copied

The ruling is a victory for the Hillsborough County firefighters union in a dispute with its ousted president.

By SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published June 10, 2005

TAMPA - Karl Schmitt, ousted president of the union representing Hillsborough County firefighters, must let a data retrieval company copy the hard drive and personal e-mail account on his home computer, a judge ruled Thursday.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Rex Barbas has not laid out provisions for opening and analyzing the contents of those copies, which contain personal information such as Schmitt's banking records and files from his wife's work for the Department of Children and Families.

But Barbas' order was a victory for the union. Leaders of Hillsborough County Local 2294 contend that Schmitt's hard drive and e-mail contain important union information that Schmitt transferred from his union-issued laptop after his April suspension.

"In these cases, there's always privacy issues," union attorney Joe Weissman said. "Once the imaging (copying) is performed, hopefully we can agree on the procedures for going forward with the data. If not, we'll be back in front of the judge."

Schmitt, suspended because of a dispute over union legal fees, admits he cleared most of the laptop's contents before turning it over to union leaders during an April 4 meeting.

But he insists copies of the deleted files, hundreds of Microsoft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and e-mails can be retrieved from a hard drive at the union hall.

Union leaders say they don't know of any such hard drive.

"Mr. Schmitt has already destroyed files, and he has done it in such a way that it's impossible to know everything that was destroyed," Weissman said. "We need to preserve this data before he can delete any more of it.

"The only way for us to know what might have been deleted from the laptop is to have access to all the electronic media Mr. Schmitt had access to. That includes his home hard drive and e-mail."

Barbas said the copying cannot be done by E-Hounds, the company the union hired as its computer forensic expert. He ordered that a new data retrieval company be chosen, and that the company hold onto the copies until decisions are made about how to examine them without invading Schmitt's privacy.

Goldsmith argued that the order for preserving evidence should apply to union leaders, too.

Barbas instructed union leaders not to delete anything from the computers at the union hall, and he said the directive applies to the union-issued laptop used by secretary Chris Boles.

--Shannon Colavecchio-Van Sickler can be reached at 813 226-3373 or svansickler@sptimes.com

[Last modified June 10, 2005, 01:10:11]