ABSTRACT
Facts: Plaintiffs were hired by Nissan in June of 1989 as Information Systems Specialists, to assist Infiniti car dealership personnel in resolving problems with the computer system which ran the operations of Infiniti dealers. Plaintiffs were essentially customer service representatives for users of the computer system. In June of 1990, one of plaintiffs’ co-workers, Lori Eaton, was conducting a training session, demonstrating the use of Email at an Infiniti dealership. In order to show how email could be used to aid the management of the dealership, Eaton randomly selected a message sent by Bourke to an employee of the dealership. Unfortunately, Bourke’s email was of a personal, sexual, nature and not business-related. Eaton reported this incident to her supervisor, who with management’s authorisation reviewed the email messages of the entire workgroup. Nissan found substantial numbers of personal, including sexual, messages from Bourke and Hall, and issued written warnings to plaintiffs for violating the company policy prohibiting the use of the company computer system for personal purposes. On 28 December 1990, while Nissan was closed for the Christmas holiday, plaintiffs filed grievances with Nissan’s human resources department, complaining that the company had invaded their privacy by retrieving and reading their email messages.
