Law Blog

It’s official – we’re now taking our legal cues on privacy from China and South Korea.  Not literally of course; though like every American court we can still look to another country’s legal statutes and cases for inspiration… though that’s going away from the point of my post today.

You remember email, right?  That thing you’ve been using as your main source of written communication since the last decade?  The major form of correspondence that has surpassed old-fashioned snail mail and which is relied upon by everyone from business titans to celebrities, the president, and your aging grandmother (who floods your inbox with those funny grammatically incorrect cat pictures)?  Yeah, that email – it’s no longer protected against searches from the police.

“No, that can’t be right!  Right?  Email?  They are no different than letters you received in the mail; how can they not be afforded the same protection?” Well, apparently if you think like that you’ve been preempted by a federal judge, my friend.

Specifically, this ruling comes down from and Oregon Federal Judge Michael Mosman (I almost typed Michael Madsen; if he gave the ruling I might’ve been less outraged).  Judge Mosman argues that unlike regular snail mail which is handled by postal employees, e-mail should not be afforded the same protection against unlawful searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment because when an email is sent, it goes through various Internet service providers.  By traveling through these different providers, each email leaves a digital image of itself with each ISP.  And apparently this fact is enough to distinguish email from regular land mail because by leaving a digital copy of itself, emails are in essence open to the ISP to read and monitor and therefore people who send emails cannot expect to have the same level of privacy as when one sends a regular piece of mail through the post office.  Judge Mosman’s full opinion can be read here (please note that the link is to a PDF).

Sound mental?  Yeah, well it should.  Judge Mosman seems to hang his ruling on the notion that because emails aren’t sealed in envelopes like a written letters, people should expect it to be read.  Now to be fair, police would still need a warrant to search through your email.  However, they’ll just need to submit the warrant to an ISP that has your emails to get access to them, thereby completely bypassing you and giving you no notice before invading your private emails.

Now on one hand, Judge Mosman’s argument makes some sense.  Junk mail in the form of post cards and brochures are almost never sealed and the courts have generally viewed these as forms of advertisement and therefore not protected under the Fourth Amendment since it’s argued that junk mail is meant to be seen by as many people as possible.  However, this is also where Judge Mosman’s argument breaks down because private emails aren’t advertisements, but are actual private communications between parties.

“But Andrew, what about the whole issue of emails leaving digital copies of themselves on ISPs and not being sealed like normal letters?”  Well let me answer that question, too, and thank you for asking so kindly.  Though emails are not physical sealed, they are often digitally encrypted to prevent prying eyes from seeing its contents.  Therefore, an analogy can be drawn between sealing and encryption since they both show the sender’s intent to keep their communication private.  Furthermore, like postal workers who we trust not to open our mail, similarly we trust our ISPs not to read our emails.

Anyway, all my ranting is meaningless until someone challenges Judge Mosman’s ruling or the legislature passes a law that gives emails the same protection against unlawful searches and seizures that physical mail enjoys.

So get started people, write your senators and congressmen, just don’t email them – for now.

According to our internal traffic statistics, it appears that one of the most popular law library articles on our website is about wrongful terminations.

Does this mean that your employer is going around firing employees left and right, just for fun? Probably not…unless you work for this guy.

More likely, the current state of the economy (in case you haven’t heard, it’s not doing too hot right now) has led to many people losing their jobs, with no sign that the bloodletting of employment is going to abate anytime soon. When someone loses their job, especially if it’s for economic, and not performance-related reasons, they are understandably upset.

However, the vast majority of terminations are perfectly lawful. In virtually every state in the U.S., employment is “at-will,” meaning that the relationship is completely voluntary, and dependent on the mutual consent of both parties. This means that employees can quit their jobs at any time, and that employers can fire them at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all.

There are exceptions, however. For example, under federal law, and the laws of almost every state, it is unlawful to fire or refuse to hire a person because of their race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or disability (if it can be reasonably accommodated). Also, if the employee is working under an employment contract, they can only be terminated pursuant to the terms of the agreement.

Whether your termination is ultimately found to be lawful or not, it is not a bad idea to speak with an attorney if you suspect that improper motives colored your employer’s decision. It’s better to talk with an attorney for a few minutes and have them tell you that you don’t have a case, then to sit on your rights, and let a valid claim for wrongful termination slip through your fingers.

Many people seem to recognize this, and are using LegalMatch to help.

With the democratic vote down of the public option of President Obama’s health care plan, the tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free are understandably upset.  Essentially, free public health care for those who need it most sounds like a no-brainer, right?  Apparently not.  It’s fine, I guess.  I mean, who cares about the health of poor people?  Those sub-humans have been dragging our economy down for, too, long.  Always complaining about how hungry and sick they are.  Such a group of whiners…

Was I laying the sarcasm on a little too strong again?  Sorry, bad habit of mine.  *sigh*  The rich not only seem to be getting richer, but they also seem to be able to dictate how this country runs…

Anyway, I guess it’s back to the grind for all us working-class schlubs (and humble bloggers) since we don’t have the luxury of extended vacations and daddy’s money to preserve our physical and mental health.

That’s no joke either.  The working class really does need to keep on working in order to stay above that proverbial poverty line.  Even under an employee co-pay system, the average cost of health insurance for a family of 4 in America is $13,000.  $13,000 is a lot of money, but considering this amount is over a third of what the average person makes in a year and the fact that food, living, and incidental costs just keep going up, you’ll start to get a better picture if how important that chunk of income in.  Not to mention how important and vital a publically funded health care option really is to the vast majority of citizens in America.  Oh, and by the way, don’t forget that the average cost of raising one; ONE child to adulthood (which is 18 years old, just in case any of you alcoholics out there think it’s 21) ranges between $124,000 to over $250,000.  Another interesting note is that single parents with incomes over $39,000 actually spend more on their kids than two-parent households.  Guess missing a parent makes you more likely to throw money at your kid’s problems.  Wish my parents did that with me…

Having free, or at the very least, affordable health care for people and their families in light of these statistics emphasizes how vital the public option really was and is.  People will always fight over money simply because there never seems to be enough of it to go around, whether that money is taken from them through taxes or services that were once free, but no longer given as such.  It’s no surprise then why according to the latest statistics from LegalMatch, over a third of all litigation raised against employers is regarding coverage of employee benefits.  In other words, health insurance.

It’s a brain-teaser how this new democratic congress voted down such an important reform.  I mean, the majority of citizens seemed to be for it.  And last time I checked, public official were supposed to be elected in order to represent the people’s interests.  I guess we’ll never know why thing turned out like they did.  But I wonder if someone might have some clues that could point us toward this anomalous outcome.

For anyone who likes reading the many interesting and insightful postings of Andrew Dat, you might start to notice that I can’t get enough of crazy lawsuits.

This latest one comes courtesy of a (former) receptionist (and if she gets her way, soon to be millionaire) by the name of Rebecca Landrith.  Landrith alleges that she pee-peed in her pants on multiple occasions because her former employer, Littler Mendelson, in her words “had no consistent policy or procedure as to when or how [she] could take a restroom break.”

Seriously, is this really a lawsuit?  Call me crazy, but I think the vast, vast majority of us all learned how to go potty before we learned to read.  And the first rule of going number one and/or number two is that you never hold it in.  The second is to try and not miss the pot.

I was going to put a link in that last sentence to highlight my point, but according to my editor and the company’s lawyers that apparently would not have been a good idea and would’ve probably required me to write an additional apology posting.  So since I’m too lazy to write more than I have to, I decided to let that battle go.  But to all you suits-and-ties in the legal department don’t think I’ll always be that easy!

Anyway, I went off on a tangent again, which apparently I also must have to curb.  Back to the subject at hand.

Now some of you might think I’m being harsh here, especially those who were or currently are on an administrative staff for a law firm.  Having been a former assistant at a big corporate law firm I know the difficulties of working behind the scenes, so to speak.  The hours are long, the work is mindlessly boring, and worst of all your efforts often go unnoticed and un-thanked.  And when the work gets really busy, you can sometimes feel like you don’t have a moment to spare.  Furthermore, the double-edge of that last unnoticed/un-thanked sword is that usually as soon as you slow down or stop working, you’ll usually find yourself on the receiving end of a supervisor and/or partner’s verbal tirade.

However, as true as all of what I said is, in the end, regardless of how stressful your work is or how little time you have to do it, there is no reason why anyone, especially an adult, should not know that when they have to go, they have to go.  Would you really sit there and wet your pants if you knew there was a bathroom somewhere on your floor and that you had access to it?  Chances are that unless you’re working in some sweatshop you probably know that you can use the bathroom without the fear that your manager is going to fire or beat you.

One last note about Landrith: if I pissed my pants in front of all my colleagues I’d be pretty embarrassed, too.  But I don’t know if I’d have the guts to demand someone pay me $1.59 million for doing it.

I’ve read my fair share of odd cases, but nothing ever brings a smile to my face faster than a frivolous lawsuit.

Apparently people really can sue for anything.  A Detroit planning department employee is suing the city because she claims the strong scents from her co-worker’s cosmetics are preventing her from working.  Further details regarding the facts of the case are limited at the moment, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the plaintiff is probably nuts.  The employee is alleging the fragrances in her office are in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which, as I stated earlier, seems pretty nuts.

Let’s just try to break this one down a little, shall we?  I’m assuming the employee is suing based on Title I of the Act since that’s the part that deals with employment.  The relevant part of this section would seem to be that workplace discrimination based on a person’s disability includes among other things “not making reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of disabled employees.”

In reading that section, two words jump out to me: reasonable and disabled.  These two terms are very general and open for some board interpretation that I’m sure any lawyer worth his salt could probably spin into a lawsuit.  However, in my opinion, not one that can or should be won.

You see, though “reasonable accommodations” could mean essentially anything that can be done to allow a disabled person to do their job.  The caveat is that it must actually be reasonable, in other words, not nuts.  The employee wants all similar scents to be banned from her place of employment.  Which, to make an analogy, would be like using a grenade to kill an ant.  Both are ridiculously overkill.  A more reasonable accommodation would be to just give her a separate office or even just prevent people who wear cosmetics with scents from approaching her (though even that one is pushing it).

Now even if the employee were to agree to this compromise, she’d still have a much bigger problem on her hands: proving she’s disabled.

Call me old-fashioned, unhip, uncool, or whatever it is kids use to describe people who aren’t with it these days, but I really don’t think a person is disabled just because they don’t like the smell of something.  Barring some incredibly rare allergy that renders this particular employee in some sort of pained state, there’s no way she’d be able to convince a judge (though maybe a jury) that she’s disabled.  The only thing she’d be able to prove is how overly sensitive and litigious people have become.  Instead of wasting the time of the court, she should just learn to deal with the little daily annoyances of life because last time I checked there are a lot of them.

Sorry, I’ll get off my soapbox now.  All I’m saying is that there are a lot of more important issues for the court to decide.  And it’s those types of cases that deserve our great justice system’s attention.