[Piskvorrr]

If you barge in, lawyers blazing, shouting about "stolen intellectual property", the likely response is "don't have any, never had", regardless of its veracity. OTOH, "disks that are left unerased by accident" _and_ generally being very open on the nature of the emergency is much more likely to bring help.

[adrianpike]

This case is one I'd be pretty careful about though as a former employee - the situation the company's found themselves in is pretty indicative of mismanagement, and desperate people do desperate things.

IANAL, but a hold harmless agreement would be a simple CYA that I'd do if I was personally in this situation.

[Piskvorrr]

Indeed. That's why I wrote, in essence "if you start with 'you surely HAVE our code, GIMME!!!!!'", the answer will always be 'nope', regardless of facts".