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City of Ontario v. Quon, 130 S. Ct. 2619 (2010)

The City of Ontario’s Computer Usage, Internet and E-mail Policy provides that use of the city’s computers and other electronic equipment, networks, etc., is limited to city-related business, that access is not confidential and “users should have no expectation of privacy or confidentiality when using these resources.” Sergeant Jeff Quon, a member of the city’s SWAT team, signed an employee acknowledgement of the Policy and attended a meeting in which he and others were informed that text messages were considered to be the same as e-mail and could be audited by the department. However, Quon was later told that the content of his text messages would not be audited so long as he paid the department for any charges associated with texting more than 25,000 characters in a billing cycle. When a lieutenant in the department “grew weary” of being a bill collector for officers who exceeded the 25,000 character limit, the department contacted Arch Wireless and requested transcripts of the text messages. After the department received the transcripts from Arch, internal affairs conducted an investigation to determine “if someone was wasting city time not doing work when they should be.” The investigation revealed that many of Quon’s messages were personal in nature and sexually explicit.

On Wednesday, June 23, 2010, I will be speaking at the 2010 Employment Law Update telephonic conference sponsored by CEB.  It is always a lively and informative program, and I encourage you to enroll.  The program runs from 1:00 p.m. to 2 p.m. (Pacific).  One hour of MCLE credit is available.

Details after the break.

Today, in a decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a case involving an employee’s assertion that a government employer had violated the Fourth Amendment by unreasonably obtaining and reviewing personal text messages sent and received on employer-issued pagers.  Justices Stevens and Scalia issued concurring opinions.

City of Ontario v. Quon (08-1332)

People v. Tabb, 170 Cal. App. 4th 1142 (2009)

Edward Nathaniel Tabb, Sr. was convicted by a jury for grand theft of his employer’s property. Tabb worked as a “runner or helper for pipe fitters” at BAE Systems. Over a period of approximately two months, Tabb brought new or used ship parts to A to Z Auto Dismantling, a recycling company, and sold them…

Alch v. Superior Court, 165 Cal. App. 4th 1412 (2008)

In this ongoing putative class action filed by television writers alleging “industry-wide” age discrimination, the writers served subpoenas on the Writers Guild of America (“WGA”) and other third parties, seeking demographic information, including dates of birth, employment data such as writers’ employers, job titles, credits and dates of employment, and anecdotal evidence of age…

Quon v. Arch Wireless Operating Co., 529 F.3d 892 (9th Cir. 2008)

Arch Wireless contracted to provide wireless text-messaging services for the City of Ontario, including its police department. Pursuant to the city’s general Computer Usage, Internet and E-mail Policy, the use of the city’s computers and other electronic equipment, networks, etc., was limited to city-related business, access was not confidential and “users should…

United States v. Ziegler, 456 F.3d 1138 (9th Cir. 2006)

After the owner of Frontline Processing contacted the FBI with a tip that an employee, Brian Ziegler, had accessed child pornography on the Internet from a workplace computer, Frontline entered Ziegler’s locked office and made a copy of the computer’s hard drive, which was provided to the FBI. Forensic examiners at the FBI discovered…

Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, Inc., 39 Cal. 4th 95 (2006)

In this proceeding, several California clients of SSB filed a putative class action seeking damages and injunctive relief against SSB’s Atlanta-based branch’s practice of recording telephone conversations with California residents without their knowledge or consent. The lower court affirmed dismissal of the lawsuit after applying the law of the State of Georgia. The…

Tien v. Superior Court, 139 Cal. App. 4th 528 (2006)

In this wage and hour class action litigation against Tenet Healthcare Corporation, plaintiffs sought from Tenet the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all of the putative members of the class, which Tenet estimated to be approximately 50,000 people. The parties subsequently agreed that a neutral letter would be sent to a random sample…

Readylink Healthcare v. Lynch, 440 F.3d 1118 (9th Cir. 2006)

Readylink Healthcare and its founder, sole shareholder and officer, Barry Treash, sued David Lynch and his law firm for invasion of privacy (public disclosure of private facts) based upon, among other things, Lynch’s posting on his website that Treash was a “convicted felon.” (Lynch had defended a former Readylink employee in trade secret litigation…