Rocky Mountain Bank v. Google, Inc.

Rocky Mountain Bank v. Google Inc.
Court	United States District Court for the Northern District of California
Decided	September 23, 2009
Docket nos.	09-cv-0438503
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting	James Ware

Rocky Mountain Bank v. Google Inc. was a decision by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California holding that Google had to reveal the account information of a Gmail user who had been mistakenly sent sensitive information from Rocky Mountain Bank.

In August 2009, a Rocky Mountain Bank employee was asked by a customer to forward loan reports to the customer's agent. Instead, the employee mistakenly sent the email to a different account and mistakenly included a file of sensitive loan details from 1,325 individual and business customers. He emailed the Gmail user, asking the user to contact the bank and delete the email. Because the user was unresponsive, the employee asked Google to divulge the user's identity. Pursuant to its privacy policy, Google refused, noting that the bank needed to obtain a court order to obtain the information.

After the bank sued Google, judge James Ware ruled that Google had to lock the Gmail account and divulge the user's account information to the bank. If the user had accessed the sensitive email, Google also had to reveal the user's identity. After Google revealed the account information, both parties filed a joint motion requesting that the judge's ruling be vacated. They explained that Google's disclosures mooted the order. The Gmail user had marked the email as spam without opening it and the email had been deleted unread on September 19, 2009.