By order of the Commercial Court No. 16 of Madrid, I was appointed as a computer expert in ordinary proceedings.
These proceedings had been previously handled by Commercial Court No. 11 of Madrid. Within the framework of these prior proceedings, a computer forensic report was prepared by another court-appointed computer expert based in Barcelona. During the proceedings at Court No. 16, an extension was requested for certain issues addressed in the previously submitted computer forensic report, and it was agreed that this extension would be carried out by a newly court-appointed expert.
The subject of the dispute was based on an information leak by a former employee of the plaintiff, who was defended by the law firm Uría Menéndez. The lawsuit pitted two national companies and one community company against each other, all specializing in providing electronic contracting and electronic communication certification services, consolidated in their respective businesses and with an international presence.
My involvement as an expert in the proceedings required studying the previously submitted expert report. In its more than 300 pages, it detailed various background information, investigation elements, actions carried out along a timeline, and the results of analyses of different digital evidence, including, among others, several hard drives and a Virtual Data Room (VDR). After studying this report, I requested access to a series of evidence containing different file repositories, as their analysis was required to answer the questions posed in my designation as a computer expert.
In addition to the above, for the preparation of the commissioned expert report, it was necessary to hold an in-person meeting in Madrid, a videoconference meeting to acquire existing evidence from a cloud storage space, and another videoconference to conduct a forensic acquisition of evidence existing in the ERP system managed by the community company. In this last videoconference, the law firm Maio collaborated in coordination tasks.
The analysis of the acquired evidence, including an expert report from FTI Consulting and another from GrantThorton, revealed, from various sources of information, the former employee’s access to a wide range of documentation owned by the plaintiff. This documentation presented varying degrees of technological relevance, covering database design information, recommendations on usability and user experience of software applications, source code, application architecture information, information security documents, and technical and project management documents for computer systems.
After the submission of my expert report, the plaintiff forwarded it to the computer expert who authored the initial report, in order to verify that the conclusions contained in both reports were compatible and favorable to the defense’s interests. To my surprise, I received a phone call from said expert, where he acknowledged the value of my report and thanked me for the work reflected therein.
In these proceedings, the hearing took place at the court’s headquarters, located on Gran Vía in Madrid, requiring the in-person ratification of the two computer experts appointed throughout the entire investigation. The computer expert appointed by Commercial Court No. 11 ratified first, remaining in the courtroom during my ratification. At the end of the hearing, there was mutual recognition between both experts for the work performed by each, as well as for the good impression the other expert had gained by witnessing my ratification and the answers to the questions presented by the legal representatives of the defendant parties, which totaled up to 4 lawyers.
