Stengart v. Loving Care Agency, Inc.
Supreme Court of New Jersey
990 A.2d 650 (2010)
Marina Stengart (plaintiff) used a company laptop provided by Loving Care Agency, Inc. (defendant) for work but occasionally sent personal emails through her own password-protected personal email account, which the company's electronic-communications policy allowed but did not clearly address for privacy purposes. She never saved her personal email password on the laptop. After leaving Loving Care and returning the laptop, she sued the company for employment discrimination; Loving Care recovered her personal emails, including ones to her lawyer, from the laptop and used them in discovery. Stengart moved to have those attorney-client emails returned and disregarded; the trial court sided with Loving Care, reasoning she'd waived privacy by agreeing to the company policy, but the appellate court reversed, and Loving Care appealed.
Whether an employee has a reasonable expectation of privacy in personal emails to her attorney, sent through a personal, password-protected account on a company-owned laptop, under an ambiguous company computer-use policy.