Opinion ID: 771054
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Jury Instructions on Damage

Text: 29 Defendant next argues that the district court instructed the jury improperly on the definition of damage.  Defendant requested this instruction: Damage does not include expenses relating to creating a better or making a more secure system than the one in existence prior to the impairment. The court refused the request and gave a different instruction. The court explained to the jury that damage is an impairment to Slip.net's computer system that caused a loss of at least $5,000. The court continued: 30 The term loss means any monetary loss that Slip.net sustained as a result of any damage to Slip.net's computer data, program, system or information that you find occurred. 31 And in considering whether the damage caused a loss less than or greater than $5,000, you may con sider any loss that you find was a natural and fore seeable result of any damage that you find occurred. 32 In determining the amount of losses, you may con sider what measures were reasonably necessary to restore the data, program, system, or information that you find was damaged or what measures were reasonably necessary to resecure the data, program, sys tem, or information from further damage. 33 In reviewing jury instructions, the relevant inquiry is whether the instructions as a whole are misleading or inadequate to guide the jury's deliberation. United States v. Dixon, 201 F.3d 1223, 1230 (9th Cir. 2000). In this case, the district court's instructions on damage and loss  correctly stated the applicable law. Defendant concedes that damage includes any loss that was a foreseeable consequence of his criminal conduct, including those costs necessary to resecure Slip.net's computers. He does not argue, therefore, that the court misstated the law. Defendant contends instead that the court's instruction might have led the jury to believe that it could consider the cost of creating a better or more secure system and that his proposed additional instruction was needed to avoid that possibility. The district court's instruction, when read in its entirety, adequately presented Defendant's theory. The court instructed the jury that it could consider only those costs that were a natural and foreseeable result of Defendant's conduct, only those costs that were reasonably necessary, and only those costs that would resecure the computer to avoid further damage. That instruction logically excludes any costs that the jury believed were excessive, as well as any costs that would merely create an improved computer system unrelated to preventing further damage resulting from Defendant's conduct. In particular, the term resecure  implies making the system as secure as it was before, not making it more secure than it was before. We presume that the jury followed the court's instructions. United States v. Montgomery, 150 F.3d 983, 997 (9th Cir. 1998). 34 Because the district court's instructions fairly and adequately covered the elements of the offense, we review the instruction's `precise formulation' for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Knapp, 120 F.3d 928, 930 (9th Cir. 1997). The district court in this case did not abuse its discretion in rejecting Defendant's precise formulation of the definition of damage. See United States v. Smith , 217 F.3d 746, 750 (9th Cir. 2000) (stating that it is not required that a jury be instructed in line with the chosen words of the accused).