Total Articles: 11
A Worthy Goal – Zero Interoffice Emails!
Do you cringe in the morning while your computer boots up – anticipating the onslaught of emails that demand your immediate attention? Or maybe you’re a late night replier – too tired to think – but trying to clear your inbox so you can sleep like the rest of the world. Could a world without emails exist?
Employer Liability for Accessing Employee’s E-Mails
When a former employee sues his former employer, an immediate issue of concern is how to preserve all electronically stored information (ESI) that may be relevant to the claim. Failure to do so may result in a claim of spoliation, sanctions against the employer and its legal counsel, or even an adverse ruling. Good employment counsel understands these consequences and how to avoid them in the first instance.
The Lesson to Learn From University Dean’s E-mail Snafu
Wesley University’s Dean of Students was one of several academic advisors who received an email from the school’s Director of Advisement.
Auto-Forwarding Employee E-mails Presents Risk Under Federal Wiretap Act.
Employers’ ability to monitor e-mails sent by employees at work is a hot topic in privacy law and is being addressed by a growing number of courts around the country as the law works to catch up with technology. In Chicago, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals gave reason to view this issue from a different perspective, finding that an IRS agent violated the Wiretap Act by secretly setting up his boss’s e-mail account to forward all received e-mail messages to his own account.
Are Employees' Personal Emails On Work Computers Private? "Sometimes" Rules N.J. Supreme Court.
Until last week, most employers believed that they had the right to review -- and in fact owned -- any electronic information stored on company computers. In a recent decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court carved out an exception to this rule. When an employee exchanges emails with her attorney through a personal web-based email account using a company computer, that email is attorney-client privileged even though the computer may automatically create a viewable copy of the email's text in temporary internet files on the company computer. In addition to ratifying, once again, the sanctity courts grant to the attorney-client privilege, the case highlights the importance of well-drafted company policies to enforce workplace rules and protect employer rights. Although the precedent applies only in New Jersey, the decision is significant for all employers.
Advice on Employees’ E-Mail (pdf).
You may have seen the November 24 Wall Street Journal article about a handful of recent court decisions finding that employees have a right to privacy in e-mails transmitted on personal e-mail accounts accessed on company computers. Importantly, under these and similar decisions, the employees would not have had such a right to privacy had their employers maintained a well-drafted technology use policy. Accordingly, it has become more important that employers draft, disseminate and enforce workplace technology use policies to defeat employees’ claims that personal e-mails on company computers, including communications with attorneys, are protected by a right to privacy. A well-drafted technology use policy should provide that:
How Often Should Employees Check E-Mail After Hours?
If you’re an associate at the law firm Quinn Emanuel, the answer is “very, very often.”
Regulating Employee Email.
Considering the widespread availability of computers and email to employees, it's hardly surprising that union organizers and pro-union employees now look to an employer's email system as a prime means of organizing. Here, in the context of an important new legal decision, we discuss options for lawful and effective management and control of your e-systems, including in particular your email systems.
E-Mail and Online Etiquette: What Employers and Employees Need to Know.
Everyone has some awareness that e-mail is not a particularly safe mode of communication and that you should refrain from sending confidential information over an e-mail server. Most people also know that once you click “send,” you have created a permanent record of that correspondence.
An Employer’s Right to Monitor E-Mail and Text Messages Remains Strong.
Employers continue to have the right to access, monitor, and review an employee’s use of e-mail and text messages when that employee is using company-provided technology. Yet, recent publicity of a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision has created a new buzz about the privacy rights of employees. This new decision, however, does not create an exception to the generally accepted rule: employees do not have an expectation of privacy in the communications that they send with company-provided technology. To the contrary, it outlines the importance of consistent and appropriate enforcement of electronic use policies.
Waiver of Privilege By Employees' Use of Company Email Systems To Communicate With Their Attorneys (pdf).
Employers now can use workplace policies governing the use of technology to defeat employees’
claims that email communications with their attorneys over the company’s computer systems are
privileged, according to a recent ruling by the New York County Supreme Court in Scott v. Beth
Israel Med. Ctr., Inc. In Scott, a hospital employee used his work email account to communicate with his personal attorneys. When he later sued Beth Israel for breach of contract, the hospital’s
attorneys found the communications on the hospital’s computer systems. The court denied the
employee’s motion for a protective order, and ruled that the employee waived the attorney-client
and work product privileges by using his work email account to communicate with his attorneys.
