Justice Donna Mills
A series of actions arose from an employment dispute between plaintiff Front Inc. and its former employee, defendant Khalil. In the underlying complaint, Front alleged that Khalil worked together with defendants from the United Kingdom to use Front's confidential and proprietary information to divert work from Front. Khalil alleged that, while he was still employed by Front, a partner of Front accessed and confiscated an external hard drive belonging to him, one that contained his emails and confidential information. Khalil further contended that Front did not have a policy prohibiting the use of company computers for the purpose of personal email activity and did not inform its employees that their computers would be monitored. The court concluded that any expectation of privacy that Khalil might otherwise have had that would have justified the suppression of the emails stored on his computer was overcome when he downloaded those emails, along with Front documents, to his external hard drive.
