Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: recording conversations

Recording of private conversations without the other person's knowledge is a misdemeanor. It would be wise to seek the supervisor's approval in advance.

Re: recording conversations

It is a misdemeanor only if the person being recorded had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the circumstances. See Penal Code section 632. The expectation of privacy is removed by, for example, the voice on the phone saying "this call may be monitored or recorded for quality-control (or training) purposes." It is also removed when a device which is obviously a tape recorder is placed in plain sight in the middle of the table where all the participants in the conversation can see it and maybe hear the tape moving, or maybe everyone saw and heard you push the start button.

This would not be the case, however, if the device were some tiny 21st-Century gadget that old timers (or anyone) might not recognize as a recorder.

What does Los Angeles have to do with it? I assume since you say it is a face-to-face meeting that you are BOTH in Los Angeles, sitting at the same table!

I think that if you failed to mention that you were making a recording, but the recorder was in plain sight, at a misdemeanor trial it would boil down to whether the judge or jury thought that the visible recorder was sufficent to remove the supervisor's expectation that the meeting would be private, i.e., not recorded. So, it is a question of fact: Did the supervisor have a reasonable expectation of privacy, in light of the visibility (and audibility?) of the recorder?