Trespass to Chattels, Conversion & Civil Theft Matters

The role technology plays in everyday commerce has repurposed some of the oldest torts in the common law. Trespass to chattels and conversion were developed for cattle, carriages, and cargo; today they are pleaded against web scrapers, departing engineers with USB drives, and former partners who lock a company out of its own domain or email. Florida’s civil theft statute, written for stolen goods, is routinely invoked over stolen customer lists and source code. The reason these claims persist alongside the modern trade-secret statutes is structural: a single act of unauthorized access can violate several distinct legal interests at once. It is not just that data was taken, but how it was accessed, what was taken, why it was taken, and what the taking did to the owner. A single click can raise all four questions.

Our Miami intellectual property attorneys prosecute and defend data-misappropriation disputes in Florida’s state and federal courts under every theory the facts support — the property torts, civil theft, the Computer Abuse and Data Recovery Act, the Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act — and, just as importantly, advise clients which of those theories to plead, which to hold back, and which carry a fee-shifting risk if they fail.

The How: Trespass to Chattels

The tort of interference with possession — and Florida’s tangible-property gloss

Trespass to chattels occurs when a person intentionally uses or intermeddles with personal property in the possession of another and thereby causes harm — by damaging the property, depriving the possessor of its use for a substantial time, or otherwise impairing its condition, quality, or value (Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 217–218; Coddington v. Staab, 716 So. 2d 850 (Fla. 4th DCA 1998)). Unlike conversion, it does not require that the interference be so serious as to justify a forced sale of the property; it reaches lesser intrusions, but only where actual harm results. The tort focuses on the means of access rather than the substance of what was accessed, which is why it became the first theory courts applied to automated data collection. In eBay, Inc. v. Bidder’s Edge, Inc., 100 F. Supp. 2d 1058 (N.D. Cal. 2000), the court enjoined an aggregator’s bots from crawling eBay’s auction listings, holding that the unauthorized use of server capacity was a trespass to eBay’s possessory interest in its computer system. Three years later the California Supreme Court limited the theory in Intel Corp. v. Hamidi, 71 P.3d 296 (Cal. 2003), holding that electronic contact that neither damages the system nor impairs its functioning is not actionable — a harm requirement that most courts now apply.

Florida has been cautious. Its courts have generally applied trespass to chattels to movable, tangible property (Burshan v. National Union Fire Insurance Co., 805 So. 2d 835 (Fla. 4th DCA 2001)), and while a computer or server is unquestionably a chattel, a network, a database, or a cloud account fits the definition less neatly. Florida litigants therefore reach unauthorized access through statute: the Florida Computer Crimes Act, whose § 815.06 creates a civil action for a person injured by unauthorized access to a computer, system, or network, and the Computer Abuse and Data Recovery Act (CADRA), §§ 668.801–.805, which provides injunctive relief, actual damages, disgorgement of the violator’s profits, and recovery of the data itself against anyone who knowingly and without authorization accesses a protected computer and causes harm or loss. The common-law tort remains available where the facts show physical or functional harm to the equipment — a server overloaded by scraping, a device rendered unusable — and is pleaded most often as a fallback where the statutory elements may not be met.

The What: Conversion

Wrongful dominion over property — including, in Florida, intangible data that is discrete and fixed

Conversion is an unauthorized act that deprives another of property permanently or for an indefinite time — the wrongful exercise of dominion or control over property in which the plaintiff has an ownership or possessory interest, inconsistent with the plaintiff’s rights (Senfeld v. Bank of Nova Scotia Trust Co., 450 So. 2d 1157 (Fla. 3d DCA 1984)). Because the tort protects the value inherent in the property, the analysis turns on what was taken rather than how; the interference must be substantial, but the defendant’s motive is irrelevant, and a demand and refusal are unnecessary where the taking itself is wrongful.

Florida courts have been considerably more willing to extend conversion into technology disputes than trespass to chattels. In Taubenfeld v. Lasko, 324 So. 3d 529 (Fla. 4th DCA 2021), the Fourth District recognized a claim for conversion of a company’s intellectual property, including its websites, confirming that intangible property can be converted. The law had long reached intangible rights merged into a document — negotiable instruments, stock certificates — and tangible objects embodying an intangible interest; the modern cases extend it to purely intangible property such as domain names, data files, and email accounts. The claims that succeed share two features: the property is discrete and identifiable, and it is fixed in a tangible medium at the time of the taking. A specific source-code repository, a defined customer-database export, or a copied set of files is definite enough to be owned, taken, and valued; a diffuse category such as “business methods” or “know-how” is not.

The Why: Civil Theft Under § 772.11

Treble damages and fees for felonious intent — with a pre-suit demand and a fee-shifting risk built in

Florida codified the third question — why the data was taken — in its civil theft statute. Section 772.11 gives any person injured by a violation of the theft statute, § 812.014, a civil action for threefold the actual damages sustained, and in no event less than $200, together with reasonable attorney’s fees and court costs. The plaintiff must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant knowingly obtained or used, or endeavored to obtain or use, the plaintiff’s property with felonious intent — the intent to deprive the plaintiff temporarily or permanently of the property, or to appropriate it to the defendant’s own use or the use of someone not entitled to it. The key word is felonious: conversion asks only whether the defendant exercised dominion, while civil theft asks what the defendant meant to do with the data.

The statute’s definition of property is broad enough to include intangible personal property (§ 812.012(4)), and Florida courts routinely treat confidential business information — client lists, pricing models, engineering data, source code, financial records — as property capable of being stolen, so long as the plaintiff shows a genuine proprietary or possessory interest. Two procedural features shape every civil theft case. Before filing, the plaintiff must make a written demand for $200 or the treble-damages amount, and the recipient has 30 days to comply in exchange for a written release; the demand should identify the specific information taken and the factual basis for felonious intent. And if the claim is later found to have been without substantial fact or legal support, the defendant recovers its attorney’s fees and costs — the reason civil theft should never be pleaded reflexively in what is really a contract or licensing dispute.

The contrast between two common fact patterns illustrates the line. Two companies disputing whether a shared technology platform’s output belongs to the developer or the client under an ambiguous services agreement have a contract case; a civil theft count there invites a fee award against the plaintiff. A departing software engineer who downloads the company’s source-code repository and client database to a personal drive the week before resigning, and then uses them at a new employer, presents a strong civil theft claim — knowing appropriation, intent to benefit the new employer, and the deprivation of the former employer, with felonious intent evident from the covert copying, the timing, and the use.

Property Torts, Civil Theft, FUTSA & the DTSA Compared

Which claim fits the data, the defendant, and the remedy the client actually needs

The Florida Uniform Trade Secrets Act, Chapter 688, and the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1836, protect a narrower category of information — a trade secret, meaning information that derives independent economic value from not being generally known and is the subject of reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy — against misappropriation by improper means or in breach of a duty of confidence. Both provide injunctive relief, damages measured by actual loss plus unjust enrichment or a reasonable royalty, exemplary damages of up to twice that amount for willful and malicious misappropriation, and attorney’s fees for bad-faith claims or willful and malicious misappropriation, on a three-year limitations period running from discovery. The DTSA adds a federal forum, a nationwide reach for information related to interstate commerce, an ex parte civil seizure remedy in extraordinary circumstances, and a condition: an employer that has not given the whistleblower-immunity notice required by 18 U.S.C. § 1833(b) in its confidentiality agreements forfeits exemplary damages and fees against an employee. FUTSA, unlike the DTSA, displaces conflicting tort and restitutionary claims that rest on the same misappropriation (§ 688.008) — which is why conversion and civil theft counts pleaded over a trade secret are regularly dismissed in both the Middle and Southern Districts, and why the property torts are best deployed for data that is valuable but not secret, or in the alternative until a court decides whether the information qualifies.

The Effect: Pleading — and Defending — Overlapping Claims

The same download supports several theories; the strategy is choosing the right ones

Trespass to chattels, conversion, civil theft, CADRA, and the trade-secret statutes are frequently pleaded together because the same conduct can support several theories, each with its own proof burden and remedy. The engineer who copies files before resigning has interfered with the company’s property whether or not the interference was substantial; has exercised dominion over identifiable data; has, if the copying served a new employer, acted with felonious intent; has accessed a protected computer without authorization; and has misappropriated whatever portion of the data qualifies as a trade secret. Each theory answers a different question, and each functions as a remedial safeguard for the intangible property that is now most businesses’ most valuable asset. The practical considerations that decide these cases:

• Identify the property with precision. Every theory is stronger when the complaint names the specific repositories, files, databases, accounts, or domains taken. Florida courts increasingly require trade secrets to be identified with reasonable particularity before discovery, and conversion and civil theft fail on unbounded categories.
• Sequence the trade-secret and property claims. Plead FUTSA and the DTSA for information that is secret; plead conversion and civil theft for proprietary data that is not, or in the alternative. A civil theft count over a trade secret is displaced and, if pursued, may generate a fee award against the plaintiff.
• Send the § 772.11 demand deliberately. The pre-suit demand is required, but it also previews the case and starts a 30-day clock; it should identify the property, the facts showing felonious intent, and the treble amount, and it should go out only after the claim has been assessed against the fee-shifting standard.
• Preserve the evidence before the letter. Forensic imaging of the departing employee’s devices and accounts, export logs, access records, and cloud-sharing histories establish timing, volume, and intent — the elements that separate civil theft from a contract dispute — and support the emergency injunction that often decides the practical outcome.
• Check the contracts first. Confidentiality, assignment, and computer-use agreements establish ownership and authorization; a § 1833(b) whistleblower notice preserves DTSA exemplary damages and fees; and an ambiguous agreement about who owns the output may convert the whole dispute into a contract case where the independent tort doctrine bars the property claims.
• On the defense side, test each theory independently. Authorized access defeats CADRA and § 815.06; a legitimate ownership or contract claim defeats conversion and civil theft; public availability, independent development, or the absence of reasonable secrecy measures defeats the trade-secret counts; and a civil theft claim pleaded without substantial support is an opportunity to recover fees.

Defense of trade secret, CADRA, and companion FDUTPA claims is described in our Litigation Defense Services materials; unauthorized interception of communications under Chapter 934 in our Florida Security of Communications Act Matters summary; and intrusion upon seclusion — the privacy tort that accompanies unauthorized access to personal accounts — in our Right of Privacy Matters summary.

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