In the papers (US District Court for Central District of California, Summons in a Civil Action) it states that I have been involved with the hacking of that company's database which resulted in loss of client/billing info, emails, reports, notices, etc. At this company I was a supervisor that was working primarily with the aforementioned resources that was hacked. I was terminated also for unknown reasons a few months before this happened. I personally do not have any experience or training in hacking nor disrupting any computer type databases. I find it ludicrous and unbelievable they would include me in the lawsuit knowing that I never would conduct that type of activity. Not only do I want to fight the case, but I want to counter sue them in return for slander and defamation.
The only option to make sense is for you to immediately find a California attorney review the details review the complaint against you and help you craft a way forward and identify if there are even any issues for which counter suing would present itself as an option.
Forget about defamation regarding filing a lawsuit. It is privileged. (the exception being malicious prosecution but you would have to wait until the conclusion in your favor of the underlying case. Malicious prosecution cases are very difficult to win.)
Focus on winning the lawsuit. Trying to do so without a lawyer is virtually impossible in Federal Court which has more complex rules of local and federal civil procedure than the state courts.
It sounds as if a claim under the computer fraud and abuse act (18 USC Section 1030) has been filed against you. These hacking claims were originally intended to be charged criminally but lately they have been used quite liberally in civil matters and particularly in the employer/employee context.
If you were granted access to the computers (which seems to be the case here), you may have some very good defenses to overcome the hacking claim. Generally, in order for a Plaintiff to prevail under a Section 1030(a)(2) claim, they must prove that you (1) intentionally accessed a computer, (2) without authorization or exceeding authorized access, and that he (3) thereby obtained information (4) from any protected computer (if the conduct involved an interstate or foreign communication), and that (5) there was loss to one or more persons during any one-year period aggregating at least $5,000 in value. (LVRC Holdings LLC v. Brekka, 581 F.3d 1127, 1132 (9th Cir. 2009)). Similar but slightly different elements must be established for claims under 1030(a)(4) and 1030(a)(5).
The key issue to establish in a computer fraud claim is whether or not the employee’s alleged conduct “exceeds” the scope of “authorized access.” This of course is a fact driven analysis. You should hire competent and knowledgeable counsel and make sure to file a timely response to the complaint. Whether or not a cross claim is available depends on the facts.
If all they did was sue you (all?) then you can't countersue for defamation or libel. You need a lawyer ,there in California, not on the Internet, to help you refute these charges. Yf you do not respond, you will lose.
