N.J. Supreme Court upholds privacy of personal e-mails accessed at work

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BERGEN COUNTY — A company should not have read e-mails a former employee wrote to her lawyer from a private, password-protected web account, even though she sent them from her employer’s computer, according to a state Supreme Court ruling today that attorneys said could influence workplace privacy rules across the country.

The precedent-setting ruling upheld the sanctity of attorney-client privilege in electronic communications between a lawyer and a nursing manager at the Loving Care Agency. After the manager quit and filed a discrimination and harassment lawsuit against the Bergen County home health care company in 2008, Loving Care retrieved the messages from the computer’s hard drive and used them in preparing its defense.

The unanimous decision by the state’s highest court will have broader implications in workplaces, which increasingly rely on e-mail and the internet, according to litigators on both sides of the case.

Though disappointed, the state’s highest court did not rule in Loving Care’s favor, the company’s attorney and former Supreme Court Justice Peter Verniero said the decision will be helpful to companies and employers in the future.

"The court has now clarified an area of law, and any time you have a court clarifying an area of law, it's a positive development,’’ Verniero said. He noted no top court in any other state has yet taken up the issue.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/nj_supreme_court_sets_new_ruli.html

[Dan T 8]

BERGEN COUNTY — A company should not have read e-mails a former employee wrote to her lawyer from a private, password-protected web account, even though she sent them from her employer’s computer, according to a state Supreme Court ruling today that attorneys said could influence workplace privacy rules across the country.

The precedent-setting ruling upheld the sanctity of attorney-client privilege in electronic communications between a lawyer and a nursing manager at the Loving Care Agency. After the manager quit and filed a discrimination and harassment lawsuit against the Bergen County home health care company in 2008, Loving Care retrieved the messages from the computer’s hard drive and used them in preparing its defense.

The unanimous decision by the state’s highest court will have broader implications in workplaces, which increasingly rely on e-mail and the internet, according to litigators on both sides of the case.

Though disappointed, the state’s highest court did not rule in Loving Care’s favor, the company’s attorney and former Supreme Court Justice Peter Verniero said the decision will be helpful to companies and employers in the future.

"The court has now clarified an area of law, and any time you have a court clarifying an area of law, it's a positive development,’’ Verniero said. He noted no top court in any other state has yet taken up the issue.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/nj_supreme_court_sets_new_ruli.html

even if you have restricted rights on your work pc I think you still have the user-rights to delete your internet cache.

personally i think this upholds, and is an issue purely of, attorney-client privilege. if the email was for the purpose of say setting up a meeting for sex with an underage person I think the company would have every right to turn it over to the cops, who would then use it in prosecution.