Ask HN: Getting Sued for Leaving Behind an Encrypted Partition

HN, A former employer has threatened to drag me into court, over an encrypted partition that they don't have the password for. That they believe they can compel me to disclose the password is somewhat amusing to me. They have no valuable information to retrieve. It's on a daily-use personal desktop machine. One that was left powered off, they are now in the physical presence of. It does not host any mission critical services. I created the partition for my own use. Given the pervasive monitoring tools deployed onto the company network, I found it a huge distraction to have a heavy handed desktop support team breathing down my neck and possibly logging every click and keystroke. Used as a start-up disk, I found it easier to concentrate, and do more work for them, knowing that they wouldn't be able to interrupt me by abruptly taking control of my mouse and keyboard when I'm in the middle of something. The encryption served as assurance that they could not install OS level rootkits. I also used personal laptops in the course of working for them, and it hasn't even occurred to them that such a thing is likely much, much worse than a mysterious black box occupying 500 GB on office equipment currently in their possession, and under total control. Needless to say, they are a toxic organization, and there's a reason I left abruptly. I even forfeited 14 days paid vacation time, just to never have to talk to them again. No damages have occurred, and I think that much is obvious to all parties. I'm doing nothing. Why should anyone develop an opinion that it's acceptable to jump to legal tactics in a civil context, when they could just wipe the partition and call it a day? Is it the shiny object factor? Is it a malignant, sociopathic urge to dominate? Is there a REAL reason to try and force me to divulge a password to a partition they did not create or modify? If so, please help me to understand.