After the manager quit and filed a discrimination and harassment lawsuit against the Bergen County home health care company in 2008, Loving Care retrieved the messages from the computer's hard drive and used them in preparing its defense.
The court found the company's policy regarding email use to be vague, noting it allows "occasional personal use."
"The policy does not address personal accounts at all," the decision said. "The policy does not warn employees that the contents of such emails are stored on a hard drive and can be forensically retrieved.
"Under all of the circumstances, we find that Stengart [Marina Stengart, the nursing manager] could reasonably expect that emails she exchanged with her attorney on her personal, password-protected, Web-based email account, accessed on a company laptop, would remain private," wrote Chief Justice Stuart Rabner in the decision, which upholds an appeals court ruling last year.
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