Protecting your attorney-client privilege: Don't send email at work
A California court of appeals has ruled that a worker cannot asset the attorney-client privilege for emails she sent from work when the employer stated in an employee manual that work emails were not private, Wired reports.
... [T]he e-mails sent via company computer under the circumstances of this case were akin to consulting her lawyer in her employer's conference room, in a loud voice, with the door open, so that any reasonable person would expect that their discussion of her complaints about her employer would be overheard,"the court wrote.
It's not quite true, as Wired's headline says, that the court held that workers have no privacy in work email -- but if the company announces they have no privacy, then they have none.
In this case, a secretary claimed her employer discriminated against her when she became pregnant. The company, Petrovich Development of Sacramento, used an email exchange sent from work that showed "Holmes did not suffer severe emotional distress, was only frustrated and annoyed, and filed the action at the urging of her attorney," the court noted.
On appeal, Holmes wanted the email suppressed as privileged communications,
The appeals court said Gina Holmes' e-mails to her lawyer were not confidential because her employer had a written policy that company e-mail was not private and subject to audit.
