Who’s Reading Your Emails? And Can They Be Used Against You in a Court of Law?

Many employees, even high ranking ones, use their work email for personal purposes. Such was the case with Zara USA, Inc.’s general counsel, who sued Zara for employment discrimination and wrongful discharge and used his work email to communicate with his partner and even his attorney. In Miller v. Zara USA, Inc., 151 A.D.3d 462 (N.Y. App. Div. 2017), the court determined that Miller had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his personal use of the laptop computer supplied by his employer or in his business email account. The employee handbook, which, as general counsel, Miller had “at least constructive knowledge” of, restricted the use of company-owned electronic resources to business purposes.