Legal Question in Employment Law in California

Regarding employee personal email. A management level employee was terminated essentially due to personality conflicts with a co-worker. A personal email between the terminated employee and spouse was forwarded after the employee was terminated to the subject of the email. The individual whom forwarded the email acted with malice and forethought to inflict personal insult to the person to whom the email was subject and continued harassment to the terminated employee.

Is private email correspondence of a current or former employee confidential?

Is it legal for a company to view and forward private correspondence to the subject of the email? Can the recipient of the forwarded letter to whom the subject was regarding demand apology and make legal claim for emotional and punitive damages?

The dialogue was hurtful and damaging to both the employee and his family and the recipient of the forwarded letter.

I am the recipient of the letter.


Asked on 10/19/10, 9:56 am

1 Answer from Attorneys

There is no privacy or confidentiality in any email prepared, sent or received on a company computer, network or email account. Period. Theoretically, the individual who forwarded the email to the subject person could be liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress if there was no legitimate purposed in forwarding the email, but the subject/recipient would have to prove monetary damages that foreseeably were caused by forwarding the email, which is extremely unlikely in the situation you describe.

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Answered on 10/24/10, 10:07 am


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