Ex-Employer Has To Pay Former Employees $4,000 For Email Snooping
from the watch-where-you-snoop dept
We've discussed a bunch of cases lately involving employers and the legality of reading emails of employees. The latest one is a bit strange. It involves the owner of a gym, who had two ex-employees set up a competing gym. Somewhere along the way, she became aware of some emails they wrote while still employed by her, planning out their new gym. It appears that this is because they accessed their private email accounts via the gym's computers, but left their accounts logged in. After a variety of back-and-forth maneuverings, the employer has been forced to pay $4,000 to the ex-employees for snooping on their emails, in violation of the Stored Communications Act. Of course, what's most interesting is that if the employer had wanted to get access to those emails legally, she could have probably used the normal discovery process during a lawsuit -- but by snooping, she ended up not being able to use those emails in her own lawsuit, and owing those ex-employees a few thousand dollars.
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Filed Under: email, snooping, stored communications act
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A Michigan woman whose ex-husband could go to jail for alleged email snooping is defending herself for having him charged.
“What does he expect me to do?” a tearful Clara Walker told ABC-TV’s Nightline this week about the criminal charges against her third husband, Leon Walker.
“It’s all about him right now. He forgot what he did to me. He violated my privacy.”
Leon Walker, 33, last week told Nightline that he read his wife’s emails to her second husband, with whom she was having an affair, only out of fear for the safety of their daughter.
He said she left her password by the shared computer. She denied that.
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Re:
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Nobody should ever go to jail if...
And for snooping a couple e-mails? Give the man a fine. Not jail.
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