"The firm told FOXNews.com that Cooley no longer is employed there." Investigation reporting at its finest!
Anyways. Out of the three firms I worked at, files were always backed up on cd's and locked away. The only ones that could ever be lost were active ones being worked on, but they were usually backed up on cds at 50% design. Why didn't they have these files backed up somewhere besides their hard drive?
Maybe she was the IT department. It sounds like a small firm. And the owner mentions she was the only other person with access to the files, which I would expect to be true of the IT person. Either way, the irony of the whole thing is fabulous.
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My other car is a Dakota Creek Advanced Multihull Design.