Ruling suggests limits on employer's access to personal e-mail

Can employers read an employee's personal e-mail composed and sent via a corporate computer, and does the employer own that e-mail? Especially if it's an e-mail to a lawyer, which raises special questions of client-attorney privilege that invoke confidentiality?

There's often the assumption that all e-mail that employees write on company computers is under the ownership of the company, which when storing it can read it at any time, and companies typically spell out what they consider their rights in a formal corporate policy. But in a legal case that came to it under appeal, the New Jersey Supreme Court last week decided an employee should have had an expectation of e-mail privacy and confidentiality because she used a personal Webmail account, in this case Yahoo, not the corporate e-mail system.

That decision, handed down by the Supreme Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, reversed the lower court's decision about the e-mail of Marina Stengart, who had filed a legal suit against her former employer, Loving Care Agency, a home-care services firm, alleging discrimination.