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NJ Court Upholds Privacy of Personal Emails At Work
chiguy sends word of a ruling from the New Jersey Supreme Court which found that a company did not have the right to read emails from an employee's personal account even through the account was accessed on a company computer. This ruling is likely to set precedent for other workplace privacy cases around the country.
"'The court has recognized the very legitimate and real concerns with regards to privacy. This gives some guidance to employers in terms of how explicit (e-mail) policies need to be,' [attorney Marvin Goldstein] said. The ruling stems from a harassment and discrimination lawsuit Marina Stengart of Bergen County filed three years ago against Loving Care of Ridgefield Park. Stengart, then the executive director of nursing, sent her attorney eight e-mails from her company-loaned laptop about her issues with her superiors. Stengart used her Yahoo e-mail account. 'Under all of the circumstances, we find that Stengart could reasonably expect that e-mails she exchanged with her attorney on her personal, password-protected, web-based e-mail account, accessed on a company laptop, would remain private,' Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote in the decision, which upholds an appeals court’s ruling last year."
MARINA STENGART v. LOVING CARE AGENCY, INC., [and others]
http://www.employerlawreport.com/uploads/file/Steingart%20v_%20Loving%20Care.pdf
As part of the employment relationship, the company
provided plaintiff with a laptop computer and a work email
address. Prior to her resignation, plaintiff communicated with
her attorneys, Budd Larner, P.C., by email. These communications
pertained to plaintiff's anticipated suit against the company,
and were sent from plaintiff's work-issued laptop but through
her personal, web-based, password-protected Yahoo email account.
After plaintiff filed suit, the company extracted and
created a forensic image of the hard drive from plaintiff's
[New Page]
computer. In reviewing plaintiff's Internet browsing history,
an attorney at Sills Cummis discovered and, as he later
certified, "read numerous communications between [plaintiff] and
her attorney from the time period prior to her resignation from
employment with [the company]." Sills Cummis did not advise
Budd Larner that the image extracted from the hard drive
included these communications.
Many months later, in answering plaintiff's
interrogatories, the company referenced and included some of
plaintiff's emails with her attorneys.
That sounds like the type of shit that should get the company lawyer disbarred.
Reading the facts of the case, I'm not at all surprised the Judge ruled the way he did.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The company did have their usage policies written out and the court noted that they explicitly said "occasional personal use is permitted."
So she didn't violate the company's acceptable use policy.
If the company policy had said that personal use is never permitted, the court might well have ruled differently.