A Dallas trial lawyer has sued a company that bills itself as a global leader in reviewing electronic documents for discovery purposes, claiming that the company illegally downloaded more than 10 years of one of his client’s personal emails.
The lawsuit was filed last month in state district court in Tarrant County by J. Robert Miller Jr., founder of Miller Bryant, against Consilio, which according to its website is “one of the most recognized, well-regarded and capable e-discovery, document review and legal consulting service providers anywhere in the world.” On LinkedIn, Consilio claims to have almost 2,000 employees.
Miller’s suit said Consilio, through an agent in Fort Worth, violated state and federal law and the privacy of one of Miller’s clients, Angelyn Olson, by accessing a tranche of “deeply sensitive” emails “which contained medical, financial, and other private, personal information.”
Allison J. Maynard, Consilio’s lawyer in the suit and a partner at Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker in Dallas, did not return a telephone call seeking comment. In her answer to Miller’s suit, Maynard contended that the plaintiff has failed to show that any injury occurred as a result of her client’s “allegedly” downloading the emails without authorization.
Miller said he’s been assured by the other side that the emails are secured. “But these are the same people,” he added, “who violated our written agreement in the first place about what emails of Mrs. Olson’s they were entitled to see.”
The e-brouhaha stems from a 2021 federal lawsuit in Maine over Olson’s handling of the finances of a wealthy, elderly, infirm German law professor who maintains a summer home on five acres – and a 45-foot sailboat (or, as it’s frequently described on the internet, a “yacht”) – in Vinalhaven, a moneyed community on an island off the coast of mainland Maine. In a pleading filed by Miller in the Maine suit, the professor, Andreas von Hirsch, now 87, is described as a German “baron,” a “renowned legal philosopher” and, at one time, “the largest property owner in Munich.”
Olson, whose family served as caretakers to the professor’s summer home for more than 40 years, is accused in the pending Maine case of misappropriating “a small fortune” of the German professor’s money – of, among other things, dipping into the baron’s bank accounts to treat herself to dinners at expensive restaurants, liquor, spa treatments and merchandise purchased online.
Miller, while denying the allegations against his client, agreed late last year to allow the Maine lawyers for von Hirsch limited discovery of Olson’s emails, as they pertained to the professor and his associates. The agreement specified 12 search terms and email addresses that could be explored for pertinent evidence.
Instead, his suit says, Consilio, the company hired by the professor’s lawyers to conduct the discovery search, downloaded all of the emails in Olson’s account dating back to 2012, “an invasion of [Olson’s] privacy and … a criminal offense under Texas and Maine law.”
The suit before District Judge Melody Wilkinson in Fort Worth seeks unspecified actual and punitive damages. Miller is requesting a jury trial.