By MICHAEL VIRTANEN
Associated Press

ALBANY - A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against several customs agents by a New York software company that folded after the owner's husband was mistakenly targeted in a child-pornography investigation.

U.S. District Judge Hon. David Hurd ruled that Susan Hallock, who owned Ferncliff Associates in Mohawk, failed to show that the agents named in the suit were personally involved in damaging hard drives that were confiscated in June 2000, copied, and returned six months later.

When the Hallocks' computers were returned, they said the equipment was damaged beyond repair and they were forced to close the business.

The Hallocks claimed loss of property without due process, a violation of their Fifth Amendment rights. Hurd noted that in order to sue for unconstitutional actions by agents acting under federal authority, there has to be evidence to show that each agent was directly involved or supervised.

‘‘The record is devoid of any evidentiary support that the defendants had the requisite personal involvement in damaging of the plaintiffs' intellectual property stored on the detained hard drives,'' Hurd wrote. He noted that in her deposition, Susan Hallock said she didn't know whether Customs special agents Margaret Jordan, Thomas Virgilio and Dennis Harrison damaged the hardware or software.

According to the judge, they were among agents who served the search warrant and seized computers at the home and business 70 miles west of Albany. Harrison later made mirror copies of data on the seized hard drives to do a forensic analysis.

‘‘Apparently, the court disagrees with our contention the constitution applies to us too,'' said Richard Hallock, who developed and sold Ferncliff's business software. He said the case should be appealed, but doubted the couple can do so because of financial and health issues. They now live in Naples, Fla.

The suit was first filed more than six years ago. In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to stop the case, rejecting government arguments that Hallock and her husband had lost the opportunity to sue the federal agents because an earlier claim was dismissed on procedural grounds.

In June 2000, customs agents learned about a Web site that was being used to display child pornography. A trace of the credit card used to pay the site's subscription fee led the agents to Richard Hallock's home.

What the agents didn't know was that Hallock had been the victim of identity theft only a few months before, when his business credit card was stolen.

The agents seized computers, software design files, software programming codes, client files and other material - all of which belonged to Ferncliff Associates.

Several months later, the investigation was closed and no charges were brought against Richard Hallock.

U.S. Attorney Glenn Suddaby pointed to Hurd's decision, which said the hard drives were kept by authorities as evidence ‘‘in their original condition.''

The judge also noted Richard Hallock's statements that the data on one returned hard drive wasn't what he recalled was there, it also didn't match the data on the agents' copy, and Harrison never returned his phone calls about the problems with the hard drives.

In 2003, Hurd allowed the couple's suit against individual agents to proceed. Earlier, he ruled that while the Federal Tort Claims Act permits civil suits for property damage or injury from government employee negligence, it excludes property detained by customs or other law-enforcement officers.

A call to customs officials was not immediately returned.