"I think right now service providers are going to be a little leery of providing anything to the subscriber because of this case," said John H. Horwitz, who represented Arch Wireless in the case.
The court ruled against the Police Department even though the city had informed employees that it had the right to read e-mails and text messages. The court said that despite the policy, text messages were not monitored for content and employees had an expectation of privacy.
"There were a host of simple ways to verify the efficacy of the 25,000 character limit [if that, indeed, was the intended purpose] without intruding . . . on 4th Amendment rights," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the court.
The department could have warned Quon that for a month he was forbidden from using his pager for personal communications, and that all his messages would be reviewed, the court said.
Dieter C. Dammeier, who represented Quon and three other plaintiffs who communicated with him by text message, said reading one's text message "really is like somebody trying to eavesdrop on your phone conversations." He said some of the sexually explicit messages were between Quon and his wife.
"Nowadays, people text message," Dammeier said. "It's a new wave of communication, and hopefully this decision is going to be the trend that keeps them more private."
He said the case would return to the lower court to determine monetary damages.
The defendants' lawyers said they did not know whether their clients would appeal.
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m aura.dolan@latimes.com
Times staff writer Joseph Menn contributed.
