Opinion ID: 702509
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Interception--18 U.S.C. Sec. 2510(4)

Text: 18 In the Eighth Circuit case of Deal v. Spears, supra, the plaintiff, a former employee of the defendants, prosecuted a civil action seeking compensatory and punitive damages after the plaintiff learned that her employers, who lived in a mobile home adjoining the convenience store where she was employed, had intentionally intercepted and disclosed her telephone conversations. The defendants had suspected the plaintiff of providing inside information which facilitated an earlier burglary of the store. They installed a recording device on the extension phone in the mobile home and recorded 22 hours of Deal's conversations. One of the persons with whom Deal had extensive conversations was the co-plaintiff and the district court noted that much of the conversation was sexually provocative. The Deal court concluded: 19 Thus there are two essential elements that must be proved before this [the telephone extension exemption] becomes a viable defense: the intercepting equipment must be furnished to the user by the phone company or connected to the phone line, and it must be used in the ordinary course of business. The Spearses argue that the extension in their residence, to which the recorder was connected, meets the equipment requirement, and the listening-in was done in the ordinary course of business. We disagree. 20 First, we are not as easily convinced as is at least one of our sister circuits that an extension telephone is exempt equipment under section 2510(5)(a)(i) when a recording device is attached to the extension to record calls for later listening. See Epps v. Saint Mary's Hosp. of Athens, Inc., 802 F.2d 412, 415 (11th Cir.1986) (holding that the interception device was not the equipment used to record the conversation but the dispatch console to which the recorder was attached). The calls would not have been heard or otherwise acquired--that is, intercepted--at all but for the recording device, as the Spearses did not spend twenty-two hours listening in on the residential extension. When turned on, the recorder was activated automatically by the lifting of the handset of either phone, even though it was connected only to the extension phone. Further, Deal ordinarily would know (by the click on the line) when the residential extension was picked up while she was using the store phone; thus her calls likely would not have been intercepted if the recorder had not been in place. 21 It seems far more plausible to us that the recording device, and not the extension phone, is the instrument used to intercept the call. We do not believe the recording device falls within the statutory exemption. The recorder was purchased by Newell Spears at Radio Shack, not provided by the telephone company. Further, it was connected to the extension phone, which was itself the instrument connected to the phone line. There was no evidence that the recorder could have operated independently of the telephone. 22 We hold that the recording device, and not the extension phone, intercepted the calls. But even if the extension phone intercepted the calls, we do not agree that the interception was in the ordinary course of business. Deal v. Spears, 980 F.2d at 1157-58. 7 23 The First Circuit case of Williams v. Poulos, supra, was one of several bankruptcy and civil actions which arose from the demise of Consolidated Auto Recyclers, Inc. (CAR). Without reviewing the entire factual scenario, suffice to say that CAR principals, trying to get a $1,000,000 monthly telephone bill under control, decided to install a telephone surveillance system which would monitor a single, pre-selected telephone at CAR headquarters. Shortly thereafter, control of the financially-strapped CAR was transferred to Allied Capital Corporation (Allied), a venture capital firm. In a short time, the relationship between the new CEO, Ralph Dyer, and CAR's principals soured. CAR's principals wanted to regain control of CAR. They began to target their surveillance equipment on Dyer's conversations as well as on conversations between Allied personnel at CAR and Allied headquarters. Eventually, CAR's principals, attempting to gain an advantage in their quest to regain control, disclosed the fact of their telephone taping and some of the damaging information the tapes revealed. Allied filed an action alleging violations of federal and state wiretapping laws. Dyer intervened. Ultimately, plaintiff prevailed in the case, following a six-day bench trial. The district court ruled that the CAR principals violated the wiretap statutes. Cross-appeals were taken on various issues. The First Circuit affirmed the district court. The Williams court described the monitoring system utilized by CAR as alligator clips attached to a microphone cable at one end and an interface connecting [a] microphone cable to a VCR and a video camera on the other. Williams v. Poulos, 11 F.3d at 280 (internal quotes omitted). The court concluded that the monitoring device was not a telephone or telegraph instrument, equipment or facility, or a[ ] component thereof[.] Id. (internal quotes and footnote omitted). The court stated that it [is] self evident that the CAR system, far from being the type of exempt equipment contemplated by the authors of the business extension exception, is precisely the type of intercepting device Congress intended to regulate heavily when it enacted Title III. Id. 24 The Fourth Circuit case of Sanders v. Robert Bosch Corp., supra, involved a plaintiff who was a security officer whose employer, Guardmark, Inc., contracted to provide security services to Robert Bosch Corp. (Bosch). Sanders was assigned to work at Bosch, where she answered telephones in the security office. Bosch, allegedly because it had received bomb threats, installed a tape recording device known as a voice logger to record all telephone conversations. Sanders filed suit against Bosch alleging that Bosch had violated her rights under Title III by recording, without her knowledge, all of her telephone conversations. The district court held that Bosch unlawfully intercepted Sanders' conversations because Bosch could not enjoy the business extension exemption. On appeal, the Fourth Circuit stated that recording of a telephone conversation alone constitutes an 'aural ... acquisition' of that conversation. Sanders v. Robert Bosch Corp., 38 F.3d at 740 (footnote and citations omitted). Thus, the recording of conversations was an interception unless the recordings were not effected 'through the use of any electronic, mechanical, or other device.'  Id. Although Bosch's argument was that its voice logger was not an electronic, mechanical, or other device because it fell within the business-use exception, the court of appeals affirmed the district court's holding to the contrary. Citing both Deal v. Spears and Williams v. Poulos, the Fourth Circuit concluded that Bosch's voice logger did not meet the two prongs of the test for the exception: First, the voice logger must constitute a 'telephone or telegraph instrument, equipment or facility, or a[ ] component thereof,' either provided by, and installed by, BellSouth in the ordinary course of its business or, equivalently, supplied by Bosch for connection to BellSouth facilities; second, Bosch's use of the voice logger must fall within the ordinary course of its business. Id. 25 We are convinced that Deal, Williams, and Sanders are the best expressions of the law. Therefore, we conclude that the recording mechanism (a tape recorder connected to extension phones in Mrs. Murdock's home) does not qualify for the telephone extension (or business extension) exemption. 26