Background

Omega Engineering Corporation, an international company based in New Jersey, was once the employer of Timothy Lloyd. To put Omega’s importance into perspective, the U.S. Navy and NASA were two of their clients for highly specialized and sophisticated industrial process measurement devices. According to testimony during the trial, Lloyd worked at Omega as its sole system administrator from 1985 through 1996. In 1995, Lloyd had undergone Novell network training and installed Novell software on Omega’s computer system. Additionally, Lloyd was the only person who maintained and had top-level access to the Omega network.

Between 1994 and 1995, Lloyd became belligerent and increasingly truculent. Due to his poor interpersonal skills, he was demoted in May 1995 from manufacturing to support engineer. A woman who had once been Lloyd’s subordinate and had engaged in a romantic relationship with Lloyd, was the individual responsible for replacing Lloyd as manufacturing supervisor.

In June 1996, Lloyd instituted a policy to “clean up” all of the individual computers in Omega’s manufacturing department. It was unclear as to why Lloyd was implementing company policies after his demotion. Nonetheless, the policy required employees to save their files to the company’s file server and prohibited them from making their own backups. Lloyd’s manager became suspicious of this policy and requested from Lloyd access to the file server. Lloyd never complied.

By the end of June, upper management had enough of Lloyd’s behavior and terminated him in early July 1996. On July 31, Omega’s file server would not boot up. All of Omega’s manufacturing programs on the server, which contained instructions for operating the machines, were gone. Multiple computer experts were brought in to recover the files, but to no avail. The files had not only been deleted, but also had been “purged,” meaning that they were rendered unrecoverable. A leading expert on Novell networking testified at trial that this could only have been done intentionally and by someone with supervisory-level access.

The government’s theory included that on July 30, anyone who would log on to the server at any time after that date would “detonate” a program installed by Lloyd that would destroy the information on the Omega file server. The government’s theory was bolstered by the fact that the Secret Service recovered missing Omega backup tapes that had been reformatted as well as a master hard drive from the file server. This had the same string of commands that had functioned as the time bomb program found on the Omega file server.

The Decision

Ultimately, Lloyd was found guilty of computer sabotage. The jury had deliberated for over twelve hours over the span of three days and had requested testimony in the jury room before they reached their verdict. However, three days after the verdict, one juror said that she had seen on the news, during the trial, about a computer virus called the Philippine “love bug” which allowed the perpetrator to cause great harm by flooding the victim computers and causing them to crash. Whether this affected her decision is unclear; however, the defendant claimed that his 6th Amendment rights had been violated. The district court agreed, granting a new trial.

On review, the Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s holding. After a lengthy discussion, the court said that there were significant dissimilarities between the “love bug” and the “time bomb” and most jurors would not confuse the two. Therefore, the appellate court found, the defendant was not prejudiced.

Lloyd’s managers should never have allowed a single employee hold as much power as they did. This case highlights the vulnerabilities the company subjects itself to if that is allowed to happen. For example, Omega lost over 1,200 programs and many current and potential clients as well.

Akiva Shepard received his J.D. from Seton Hall University School of Law in 2014. Akiva has worked for a New York State Supreme Court Judge in Kings County, and for a NJ real estate firm.