Law Firm Wins Fired Lawyer’s Suit Over Analyzing Cell Phone Data

The law firm Zukowski, Rogers, Flood & McArdle didn’t violate the Stored Communications Act by having data extracted from a fired attorney’s smart phone, because only the phone’s internal storage was accessed and copied, a federal court in Illinois said Thursday.

ZRFM paid for attorney David Loughnane’s cell phone and its associated bills. The firm had no written policies on attorneys’ use of their firm-funded phones, and Loughnane used his for both work and personal purposes.

The firm required workers at the end of their employment to return cell phones for which it paid. When Loughnane was terminated in 2017, ...