In an extremely significant unanimous ruling, the New Jersey Supreme Court found that Marina Stengart’s former employer, the Loving Care Agency, was wrong in retrieving emails sent by her to her attorney using the company’s computers, even though this was in violation of company policy which clearly defeated the expectation of privacy in this context by indicating that emails “are not to be considered private or personal to any individual employee” and stating that the company had the right to “review, audit, intercept, access, and disclose all matters on the company’s media systems and services at any time.”
Ms. Stengart had filed a suit against the company in 2008, alleging discrimination based on gender, religion, and national origin, and accessed her personal Yahoo email account over the company’s network to communicate with her attorney.
This ruling overrules an earlier decision by a trial court which had found in favor of the company.
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