Quon

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

On October 24, 2001, Arch Wireless (“Arch Wireless”) contracted to provide wireless text-messaging services for the City of Ontario. The City received twenty two-way alphanu- meric pagers, which it distributed to its employees, including Ontario Police Department (“OPD” or “Department”) Ser- geants Quon and Trujillo, in late 2001 or early 2002.

According to Steven Niekamp, Director of Information Technology for Arch Wireless:

A text message originating from an Arch Wireless two-way alphanumeric text-messaging pager is sent to another two-way text-messaging pager as follows: The message leaves the originating pager via a radio frequency transmission. That transmission is received by any one of many receiving stations, which are owned by Arch Wireless. Depending on the location of the receiving station, the message is then entered into the Arch Wireless computer net- work either by wire transmission or via satellite by another radio frequency transmission. Once in the Arch Wireless computer network, the message is sent to the Arch Wireless computer server. Once in the server, a copy of the message is archived. The 1 Doreen Klein, a plaintiff below, has not…