SF court protects privacy of work communications
Lawyer Blogs
A federal appeals court has made it more difficult for employers to legally snoop on their workers' e-mails and text messages sent on company accounts.
Under a Wednesday ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, employers that contract an outside business to transmit text messages can't read them unless the worker agrees.
Users of text messaging services "have a reasonable expectation of privacy" in their messages stored on the service provider's network, Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote in the three-judge panel's unanimous opinion.
The ruling also lets employers access employee e-mails only if they are kept on an internal server.
The text message part of the ruling will affect more employers. According to analysts, the majority of U.S. companies pay outside parties to transmit their workers' text messages but most keep their workers' e-mail on internal servers.
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Grounds for Divorce in Ohio - Sylkatis Law, LLC
A divorce in Ohio is filed when there is typically “fault” by one of the parties and party not at “fault” seeks to end the marriage. A court in Ohio may grant a divorce for the following reasons:
• Willful absence of the adverse party for one year
• Adultery
• Extreme cruelty
• Fraudulent contract
• Any gross neglect of duty
• Habitual drunkenness
• Imprisonment in a correctional institution at the time of filing the complaint
• Procurement of a divorce outside this state by the other party
Additionally, there are two “no-fault” basis for which a court may grant a divorce:
• When the parties have, without interruption for one year, lived separate and apart without cohabitation
• Incompatibility, unless denied by either party
However, whether or not the the court grants the divorce for “fault” or not, in Ohio the party not at “fault” will not get a bigger slice of the marital property.