PROVO — A man convicted of stealing a laptop from a Utah art professor will have to pay nearly $50,000 restitution for the time the professor spent reassembling Powerpoint files that were lost.
The Daily Herald reports the Utah Court of Appeals denied an appeal Wednesday in the case of Michael J. Birkeland, who pleaded no contest in 2008 to stealing the laptop.
Birkeland had argued that he shouldn't have to pay for Utah Valley University professor Perry Stewart's labor because Stewart was a salaried university employee.
An appeals court upheld a judge's decision that Birkeland should pay for more than 900 hours of work logged to rename and recreate about 27,000 files that were lost in the theft, since the professor did the work beyond his normal salaried duties.
— Associated Press