Deal v. Spears
United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
980 F.2d 1153 (8th Cir. 1992)
The Spearses (defendants), suspecting employee Deal (plaintiff) of involvement in a store burglary, recorded 22 hours of her personal calls on the shared store phone after previously only warning her they might start monitoring calls to discourage personal use, never actually telling her monitoring had begun; the recordings, mostly irrelevant to the burglary, captured sexually explicit conversations with a man with whom Deal was having an affair. Deal sued under a federal wiretapping statute, the trial court ruled for her, and the defendants appealed, arguing implied consent and a business-use exception.
Whether knowledge of the capability of monitoring alone is sufficient to be considered implied consent to interception of wire or oral communications under federal law.