Law Blog 2.0

With unemployment reaching 10% employers are more at risk then ever from former employees who are let go, regardless of the reason attempt to take punitive action against their former employer. Recent cases highlight actions by former employees which put their former employer at risk through the spoliation of relevant data and/or theft of company trade secrets. Spoliation occurs when a party is aware of pending litigation, or should reasonably be able to anticipate pending litigation, and the party fails to suspend the destruction of documents that may be relevant to anticipated litigation; the party is also required suspend routine document purging (or passive) destruction of data by systems. Accordingly, in anticipation of potential legal issues resulting with from the termination of an employee’s, an employer should specifically define the scope (or absence thereof) of the employee’s right/expectation of privacy when using work owned information systems or computers in a policy or employee handbook. Nat’l Econ. Research Assocs., Inc. v. Evans, 2006 WL 2440008 (Mass. Super. Ct. Aug. 3, 2006)(relating to privilege of attorney-client communication of employee with his/her attorney), see also Sprenger v. The Rector and Board of Visitors of Virginia Tech, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47115 (W.D. Va. June 17, 2008)(relating to spousal privilege). Second, the employer should remind the departing employee of the former employee’s duty not to steal company trade secrets and/or other confidential material regardless of the reason. Finally, employer should inform the former employee that he/she should not delete and/or destroy relevant data if he/she anticipates bringing legal [...]