Slashdot Mirror
Girl's Facebook Post Costs Her Dad $80,000
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "BBC reports that when Dana Snay learned her father had been awarded an $80,000 cash settlement in an age-discrimination lawsuit against his former employer, she couldn't resist bragging about it on Facebook. 'Mama and Papa Snay won the case against Gulliver,' the teen posted to her 1,200 Facebook friends. 'Gulliver is now officially paying for my vacation to Europe this summer. SUCK IT.' Trouble was her father had signed a confidentiality agreement so the school refused to pay a dime and a Florida appeals court has found in the school's favor. 'Snay violated the agreement by doing exactly what he had promised not to do,' wrote Judge Linda Ann Wells. 'His daughter then did precisely what the confidentiality agreement was designed to prevent.' Snay's father said in depositions that he and his wife knew they had to say something to their daughter because she suffered 'psychological scars' from issues during her enrollment at the school and was aware that they were in mediation with Gulliver attorneys. Attorneys say it's unlikely confiding in Dana Snay would have jeopardized the settlement — it was the facebook post that did them in. 'Remember when all you had to worry about was your daughter posting naked selfies of herself on Facebook?' writes Elie Mystal at Above the Law. 'Now, things are worse.'"
As near as I can tell, there's nothing especially tech related in this story. She screwed up in a way that many before her have screwed up, it's just that she happened to use facebook to do it. Nothing to see here.
There is only one way to keep something secret; don't tell anyone. And anyone includes your teenage daughter.
Confidentiality agreements are *gasp* legal contracts. Their daughter made a stupid mistake, as teenagers do, that doesn't change the fact that the agreement was broken.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
This is why it's important to communicate with your kid. These things are not difficult to foresee. Kids (and a lot of adults) tend to believe against all reason that Facebook and it's ilk are their own private playground where nothing goes past their own circle of friends. But Facebook is just the tool here -- an attractive nuisance, if you will. It's so easy to acquire the momentary satisfaction of revealing information to your circle of friends. But it's really part of a larger problem, that of knowing when to keep your mouth shut in any medium. Adults presume at their peril that kids have this kind of insight.
So if, in this case, the adult told the kid "this is what a confidentiality agreement means, and doing this or that will violate it" and the kid did it anyway, she now owes the family about a century of allowance. But if the adult did not adequately explain this, it's really the adult's fault, because this is a natural thing for kids to want to do.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Gulliver Preparatory School wins. They don't have to pay anything...but then again, they don't have any right to suppress the truth which a court of law has declared (now that the judgement is apparently void), that they're (in my opinion) just one big waste of air space and semi-human skin wrapped in a warm moist layer of fecal matter. Spread the word! Gulliver Preparatory School is the sort of learning establishment that seemingly fires all their most experienced personnel when their age becomes worrisome - why would you want a bunch of ignorant young trolls educating your kids?
The biggest screwup here is that the father has admitted to breaking the contract by saying "we needed to tell her something", when all he needed to do was say nothing and get the schools lawyers to prove that he told his daughter about the settlement; instead of her daughter finding out by eavesdropping on a conversation, reading a letter or bank statement.
But yes, it's more of a law story than a tech story, but I can see the Your Rights Online angle. Just.
...Eric Schmidt told us there should be no reason to have any secrets.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Yeah. "We screwed up. We should've known better, but we decided to do it anyway. Here's our penalty money." "Oh, you screwed up. Your daughter didn't play by our rules. We take it all back...for teh win!"
They screwed up by divulging legally privileged information to a child, who has not yet reached the maturity to appropriately respect the confidentiality requirement.
What penalty? They agreed to a settlement, and signed a contract. The loudmouth twat breached the contract, and lost the payment the contract called for. The offer was $80K if the plaintiff would STFU. Plaintiff didn't STFU, plaintiff doesn't get the money.
Personally, I think "confidentiality for settlement" should be illegal anyways --- it's used by large companies to pressure individuals to keep quiet, OR as an excuse to deny payment for wrongs committed.
BUT confidentiality is standard language, AND the daughter IF SHE WERE MATURE enough to have this divulged to her, should have known to ask for permission before sharing this kind of information.
Then they screwed up already by signing the agreement. I don't think it's realistic to have this kind of stuff happening in your family and then not telling you teenage kid the end result. I mean, after a year of mom and dad being nervous and stressed about the thing you will - not say a word to your kid? WTF kind of parenting is that? So they should not have taken an agreement that had that kind of a clause in the first place.
she's a teenage girl. you should be able to sit her down and say "Honey, We just want to let you know that we've reached a resolution. We can't legally tell you and you can't tell anyone the details but you don't have to worry it's over". A teenage girl should have the maturity to understand and accept that.
Just another second banana
A teenage girl... maturity...
Parse Error: There is a problem parsing the sentence.
No. You aren't thinking about this at all. It has nothing to do with what the daughter agreed to. The Father agreed to tell nobody, then violated that agreement by telling the daughter, which would have been a violation that never came to light if the daughter didn't subsequently blab to the world about it. You see, the violation was the father telling the daughter, not the daughter telling the world. It was the fact that the daughter told the world that made it obvious that the father told the daughter.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Then they screwed up already by signing the agreement. I don't think it's realistic to have this kind of stuff happening in your family and then not telling you teenage kid the end result. I mean, after a year of mom and dad being nervous and stressed about the thing you will - not say a word to your kid? WTF kind of parenting is that? So they should not have taken an agreement that had that kind of a clause in the first place.
Telling her wasn't the problem. Her telling everyone via Facebook is the problem.
Be seeing you...
The human brain doesn't fully develop until 25. We don't even hold teenagers responsible for their actions until they're 17-18.
Exactly. And so this (her actions) are her parent's responsibility. And so the fact that the information they agreed to keep private was out in public is the fault of the parents, and they are suffering exactly the consequences that they agreed to suffer for doing that exact thing.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I agree completely. Exclusive contracts and confidentiality clauses should be illegal. In fact, I'd go a step further and make any contract unenforceable in court unless it is published. Just provide a government service where anybody can publish a contract and anybody can peruse the contracts which are there. It would cost very little to operate or use in the modern age of computers.
What kind of retards are people raising? I got to hear lots of interesting things when I was young, and I always understood that I wasn't supposed to talk about it to anyone, even if my parents were present.
Because we don't allow people to grow up today.
Whereas quite a few years back, people were married really early, and raising children not long after they hit puberty. Both my Grandparents were married in their early teens. I was 21, and my better half 17 when we were married in the mid 70's. Today, 30 is considered a little early by many.
Now, people in their late 20's are considered not fully mature. We've artificially extended childhood until then.. One thing is for certain, children will remain children as long as you allow them. This college age girl had the mental maturity that a 12 year old would have had at one time.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And then people have the audacity to be surprised when teenagers "rebel" and go off the deep end by resorting to drugs, petty crime, and general disobedience. Here you have a human being whose brain is telling them "you are grown up; time to start doing shit on your own, so you're not a burden to the tribe; your mom has about 8 kids younger than you to feed and look after", but everything around them is designed to deprive them of responsibility and autonomy. School is run by fascists armed with zero tolerance policies, parents are no better because cable news has convinced them that giving a teenager an inch of freedom will result in them doing vodka enemas, and popular culture feeds them the image of the typical teen as an infantile, bumbling idiot, whose greatest possible accomplishment is successfully sneaking out of the house to go to a pool party where they can drink to the point of throwing up and touch a few genitals.
weinersmith