Legal Question in Administrative Law in California

Here is the situation, Please help! I was offered a temp. position where my mothers works.my employment ended in november like scheduled. Recently my mother requested a copy of her employee file and discovered a pending garnishment for me in her file. Is my IRS garnishment confidential or is this public information? Is the company allowed to place my sensitve information in the hands of anyone who ask? Were my rights violated? Becuase I feel like it was. Is there anything I can do to protect random people from looking at my IRS garnshmentsor any other information this company has on me? What are my rights in a situation like this?Can this turn into a lawsuite becuase honestly I feel violated. Also what about my mother, is having my garnishment in her permanent employee file, a defermation of character, considering people with access to these file (her boss,HR department, co workers and possibly new employors) can see this. Are her rights violated?


Asked on 4/29/10, 4:06 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Bryan Whipple Bryan R. R. Whipple, Attorney at Law

Court files are usually public records. If you file a lawsuit, (a) you probably can't prove much in the way of money damages, and (b) a whole bunch of people will be directly exposed to, or have ready access to, everything you say and everything the defense says. Perhaps some of the records could be sealed, but your risk is high. Your mother might become a party or a witness in the case. I'd say the company made a mistake - some file clerk got the names mixed up. This is probably not intentional and almost certainly not policy at the company.

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Answered on 5/04/10, 8:26 pm


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