More on last week's NJ Supreme Court decision -

The decision we blogged about in this space last week is creating quite a bit of buzz in both privacy and employment law circles. My employment law colleagues in our New York office have authored an analysis of the decision here: Employment Alert: New Jersey Supreme Court Finds Privacy Rights in Employee E-Mails

And, the International Association of Privacy Professionals' Daily Dashboard quoted my partner, Jen Rubin:

PRIVACY LAW -- U.S.
Employee E-mail Decision Spurs More Questions
Last week's New Jersey Supreme Court decision that employees should have an expectation of privacy when they use personal e-mail accounts on corporate computers is raising new questions, NetworkWorld reports. The court's decision specified that when it comes to monitoring employees' actions online, "employers have no need or basis to read the specific contents of personal, privileged, attorney-client communications in order to enforce corporate policy." Jen Rubin, attorney at Mintz Levin in New York, says the decision brings up new questions about employer ownership of e-mail created on company-issued computers and is likely to have businesses taking much closer looks at their e-mail policies. Full Story

This is an important decision with wide-reaching implications. If you are an employer and you have not looked at your "Acceptible Use Policy" or other such electronic systems policy in a while (or worse, if you don't have one at all.....), this case should motivate you to pull it out and look again.

BREAKING NEWS: NJ Court Upholds Employee E-mail Privacy

In a precedent-setting decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court today ruled that a company should not have read e-mails a former employee sent to her lawyer from a private Web account through her employer's computer (See November 5, 2009 Privacy and Security Information blog post). According to the Star-Ledger, the court, which determined the company's policy regarding e-mail use was vague, upheld the sanctity of attorney-client privilege in electronic communications.

Given the importance of this decision to both privacy issues and employer/employee workplace issues, we will provide a complete analysis.