Tag Archives: Employment

Facebook activity did not support claim that employee solicited former employer’s clients

Invidia, LLC v. DiFonzo, 2012 WL 5576406 (Mass.Super. October 22, 2012)

Defendant hairstylist signed an employment agreement with plaintiff that restricted her from soliciting any of plaintiff’s clients or customers for 2 years. Four days after she quit plaintiff’s salon, her new employer announced on Facebook that defendant had come on board as a stylist. One of defendant’s former clients left a comment to that post about looking forward to an upcoming appointment.

Either before or after she left plaintiff’s employ (the opinion is not clear about this), defendant had become Facebook friends with at least 8 of the customers she served while working for plaintiff.

Plaintiff sued for breach of contract and sought a preliminary injunction. The court denied the motion, in part because plaintiff failed to show evidence that defendant had violated the nonsolicitation provision.

The court found that it did not constitute solicitation of plaintiff’s customers to post a notice on Facebook that defendant was beginning work at a new salon. The court said it would have viewed it differently had plaintiff contacted a client to tell her that she was moving to a new salon, but there was no evidence of any such contact.

As for having clients as Facebook friends, the court noted that:

[O]ne can be Facebook friends with others without soliciting those friends to change hair salons, and [plaintiff] has presented no evidence of any communications, through Facebook or otherwise, in which [defendant] has suggested to these Facebook friends that they should take their business to her chair at [her new employer].

See also, TEKsystems, Inc. v. Hammernick.

Photo courtesy Flickr user planetc1 under this Creative Commons license

Employer not allowed to search for porn on employee’s home computer

In re Jordan, — S.W.3d —, 2012 WL 1098275 (Texas App., April 3, 2012)

Former employee sued her old company for subjecting her to a sexually hostile workplace and for firing her after she reported it. She claimed that she had never looked at pornography before she saw some on the computers at work. During discovery in the lawsuit, the company requested that employee turn over her home computer so that the company’s “forensic computer examiner” could inspect them.

The trial court compelled employee to produce her computer so that the forensic examiner could look for pornography in her web browsing history and email attachments. The employee sought mandamus review with the court of appeals (i.e., she asked the appellate court to order the lower court not to require the production of the hardware). The appellate held that she was entitled to relief, and that she did not have to hand over her computer.

The appellate court found that the lower court failed to consider an appropriate protective order that would limit inspection to uncover specifically-sought information in a particular form of production. In this case, the company had merely asked for the hardware without informing employee of the exact nature of the information sought. And the company provided no information about the qualifications of its forensic examiner. Though the trial court tried to limit the scope of the inspection with carefully chosen wording, the appellate court found that was not sufficient to protect the employee from the risks associated with a highly intrusive search.

Photo credit: Jakob Montrasio (CC BY 2.0)

Teacher fired over Facebook post gets her job back

Court invokes notion of “contextual integrity” to evaluate social media user’s online behavior.

Rubino v. City of New York, 2012 WL 373101 (N.Y. Sup. February 1, 2012)

The day after a student drowned at the beach while on a field trip, a fifth grade teacher updated her Facebook status to say:

After today, I am thinking the beach sounds like a wonderful idea for my 5th graders! I HATE THEIR GUTS! They are the devils (sic) spawn!

Three days later, she regretted saying that enough to delete the post. But the school had already found out about it and fired her. After going through the administrative channels, the teacher went to court to challenge her termination.

The court agreed that getting fired was too stiff a penalty. It found that the termination was so disproportionate to the offense, in the light of all the circumstances, that it was “shocking to one’s sense of fairness.” The teacher had an unblemished record before this incident, and what’s more, she posted the content outside of school and after school hours. And there was no evidence it affected her ability to teach.

But the court said some things about the teacher’s use of social media that were even more interesting. It drew on a notion of what scholars have called “contextual integrity” to evaluate the teacher’s online behavior:

[E]ven though petitioner should have known that her postings could become public more easily than if she had uttered them during a telephone call or over dinner, given the illusion that Facebook postings reach only Facebook friends and the fleeting nature of social media, her expectation that only her friends, all of whom are adults, would see the postings is not only apparent, but reasonable.

So while the court found the teacher’s online comments to be “repulsive,” having her lose her job over them went too far.

Employer did not violate employee’s privacy by accessing personal laptop

Sitton v. Print Direction, Inc., — S.E.2d —, 2011 WL 4469712 (Ga.App. September 28, 2011)

A Georgia court held that an employee using a personal laptop to conduct business for a competitor did not have an invasion of privacy claim when his employer busted him at work using the laptop to send email.

Plaintiff-employee worked for a printing company. His wife also owned a printing business. On the side, plaintiff would broker printing jobs, sending them to his wife’s company. He would bring his own laptop to work and use that to conduct business for his wife’s company while at work for his employer.

One day, the boss came into plaintiff’s office (apparently when plaintiff was not in the room) and saw that the computer screen on plaintiff’s computer showed a non-work related email account, with messages concerning the brokering of print jobs to the wife’s company. The boss printed out the email messages.

Plaintiff sued, claiming, among other things, common law invasion of privacy and violation of a provision of the Georgia Computer Systems Protection Act. The case went to trial, and plaintiff lost. In fact, he ended up having to pay almost $40,000 to his employer on counterclaims for breach of loyalty. Plaintiff sought review of the trial court’s decision. On appeal, the court affirmed.

The appellate court affirmed the trial court’s finding that the boss’s access to plaintiff’s computer did not constitute common law invasion of privacy based upon an intrusion upon plaintiff’s seclusion or solitude, or into his private affairs. The court held that the boss’s activity was “reasonable in light of the situation” because:

He was acting in order to obtain evidence in connection with an investigation of improper employee behavior,
The company’s interests were at stake, and
He had “every reason” to suspect that plaintiff was conducting a competing business on the side, as in fact he was.

To bolster this holding, the court cited from a Georgia Supreme Court case that said, “[T]here are some shocks, inconveniences and annoyances which members of society in the nature of things must absorb without the right of redress.”

Former employer’s trade secret claim under inevitable disclosure doctrine moves forward

Copying of employer computer files central to trade secrets claim

Mobile Mark, Inc. v. Pakosz, 2011 WL 3898032 (N.D.Ill. September 6, 2011)

Defendant used to work for plaintiff. Before he left that organization to work for a competitor, he allegedly accessed plaintiff’s computer system and copied proprietary information to a laptop that plaintiff had loaned him. He then allegedly transferred the proprietary data to a number of external storage devices, and then installed and repeatedly ran a “Window Washer” program on the laptop to delete files and other data in order to conceal his activities.

Plaintiff sued, putting forth several claims, including a claim of misappropriation of trade secrets under the Illinois Trade Secrets Act, 765 ILCS 1065/2. Defendant moved to dismiss. The court denied the motion.

One of the bases for plaintiff’s trade secret misappropriation claim was that defendant, by going to work for a competitor, would inevitably disclose the proprietary information he had obtained while working for plaintiff. Looking to Illinois law, the court noted that “[i]nevitable disclosure is not assumed when an employee has general information in his head as a result of working for a company.” But “where evidence exists that the employee copied the employer’s confidential information, it leads to the conclusion of inevitable disclosure.”

CFAA violation where employee’s access to work computer violated fiduciary duty to employer

Plaintiff former employer sued defendant former employee for violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. 1030, alleging that defendant, while still in the employ of plaintiff, accessed confidential business information and destroyed other important data. Defendant moved to dismiss the CFAA claim. The court denied the motion.

Defendant had argued that the complaint failed to establish that access to the work computer was had without authorization. He assserted that plaintiff did not allege that at any time while defendant was employed by plaintiff his access to his work-issued computer was restricted, or that plaintiff ever told him that he was no longer permitted to access the computer.

But the plaintiff had alleged that defendant’s access violated the fiduciary duty defendant owed. The court held that under Int’l Airport Ctr., L.L.C. v. Citrin, 440 F.3d 418, 420–21 (7th Cir.2006), allegations of a breach of duty are enough to properly allege that defendant lost his authorization to access his company computer.

Compare this holding (and Citrin) with the Ninth Circuit’s holding in LVRC Holdings v. Brekka.

Employee did not violate Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by checking Facebook and personal email at work

Lee v. PMSI, Inc., 2011 WL 1742028 (M.D.Fla., May 6, 2011)

Former employee sued the company she used to work for alleging pregnancy discrimination. The company countersued under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”) alleging that the former employee violated the CFAA by using her work computer to access Facebook and check her personal email. She moved to dismiss the counterclaim, and the court granted the motion. The court found that the company failed to allege that its computer system was damaged by plaintiff’s internet usage, and plaintiff was alleged only to have accessed her own information, not that of the employer.

North Carolina supreme court reverses employee hard drive removal decision

Removal of hard drive and false claim of copyright ownership in company website and catalogs were misconduct sufficient to disqualify former employee from receiving unemployment benefits.

Binney v. Banner Therapy Products, Inc., — S.E.2d —-, 2008 WL 2370887 (N.C. June 12, 2008)

I covered this case back in 2006 after the appellate court’s decision. Now the state supreme court has reached a different conclusion.

Employee Binney was fired from her job because she claimed a copyright in the company’s website and catalogs (which she had helped create) and also because she took the hard drive of her work computer home with her over the weekend without asking. After she was terminated, she sought unemployment benefits. Her employer contested the claim.

Hard drive on a wooden table

The administrative body in charge of determining unemployment benefits found that Binney was terminated for employee misconduct and therefore not entitled to receive anything. Binney appealed that decision to a trial court, which affirmed the denial. She then appealed to the state appellate court, which reversed, and found that that given Binney’s position and responsibilities in the company and the reasonableness of her conclusions as to ownership of copyright, her actions did not rise to the level of misconduct that warranted a denial of benefits. [Internet Cases coverage of that decision.]

But the state supreme court reversed the appellate court, meaning that Binney is not entitled to benefits. The supreme court concluded that the appellate court incorrectly applied the standard of review, namely, whether the decision to deny benefits was based on “any competent evidence”.

As for the alleged misconduct of taking the hard drive home, the supreme court found that although the employer had no policy on removing hard drives, that did not contradict the administrative body’s finding that the employer did not authorize the hard drive’s removal. So there was competent evidence in the record that the removal was unauthorized, and corresponding misconduct in having removed it.

And as for claiming copyright in the website and materials, the supreme court similarly found that a determination of misconduct was supported by the record. Whether Binney believed in good faith that she had a personal copyright interest in the materials was irrelevant. She never asked for nor received permission to assert a personal claim on the company’s property by including the copyright statements, so in doing so, she engaged in misconduct.