Former Reporter Sues Station For Reading Her Personal Email
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This story we were sent last week got so buried in our email that we forgot to post it.
But it is one of those stories that needs to be seen.
Former KUSI (San Diego) reporter Anna Laurel has filed a lawsuit against her former employer and its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for allegedly invading her privacy by accessing and sharing her private emails. The lawsuit, filed last week in downtown Superior Court, accuses CFO Stephen Sadler and KUSI's owner of unauthorized access to Laurel's personal Gmail account in an attempt to intimidate her from providing damaging testimony against the TV station.
The legal action comes in the wake of allegations that Laurel was involved in a conspiracy to support Sandra Maas, her friend and former KUSI colleague, in her pay-equity trial earlier this year. Laurel was labeled a "secret agent" in this alleged conspiracy. The lawsuit states that the defendants accessed her personal email account to hinder her from providing truthful testimony that could potentially harm KUSI's interests.
Josh Gruenberg, Laurel's attorney who also represented Sandra Maas in a previous legal battle resulting in a $1.7 million victory against KUSI, commented on the lawsuit, saying, "Deciding to sue one's former employer is not an easy decision. Here, Ms. Laurel thought long and hard about the violations to her right to privacy and ultimately determined KUSI and Sadler needed to be held accountable for their actions."
The lawsuit claims that the defendants violated the state's Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, as well as intruded into Laurel's private affairs. The court records indicate that the lawsuit's financial claim exceeds $25,000, but no specific figure has been attached to the suit.
In the legal complaint, Laurel seeks various forms of damages, including general, compensatory, emotional distress, and punitive damages, with the intention of making an example of the defendants and deterring similar misconduct in the future. The lawsuit cites evidence of Sadler's admission to accessing Laurel's personal email account. He reportedly conducted multiple searches on her email account, totaling up to three hours.
The lawsuit also references a deposition in the Sandra Maas case, during which Sadler admitted to reading between 50 to 100 of Laurel's private emails over the span of several days using a company laptop stationed at the news desk. Sadler claimed that he accessed the emails to protect the company, as he believed Laurel's Gmail account had been left open on a shared laptop.
Laurel alleges that she was unaware of the privacy breach until shortly before her deposition in the Maas litigation in December 2021. She claimed that KUSI had provided private emails to her attorneys, including emails unrelated to the station or the ongoing litigation.
As the lawsuit progresses, legal experts anticipate that the case will shed light on the boundaries of privacy in the workplace and the repercussions of unauthorized access to personal information, even after an employee has left the organization. The case has been assigned to Judge Joel R. Wohlfeil.
Both KUSI and CFO Stephen Sadler have yet to publicly respond to the lawsuit or to appoint legal representation for the case. This legal battle underscores the growing importance of protecting individuals' privacy rights, especially in the digital age.
