Stolen Laptop Case Settles

I posted a piece just last week about a case involving a stolen laptop, a substitute teacher, and private, erotic photos. Last week’s post noted that a federal court in Ohio ruled that the teacher, who unwittingly bought the stolen laptop, had a privacy interest in the images she and her boyfriend had loaded on to it. That ruling meant that the case could proceed to a jury trial. But the operative term there is “could.” The case settled yesterday for an undisclosed sum. That’s not a surprise. The whole question of online privacy is still being sorted out. And I suspect the defendant in the case didn’t want to take its chances in such a weird case.