posted on Monday, January 01, 2007 8:57 PM
by
Lou Michels
Blogger Liability
There was a fair amount of discussion about a year ago over blogs generated by employees concerning what happened at work, or about their employers. Some of these cases made it to litigation, although not with the kind of salacious details of a case now surfacing in Washington, D.C. Federal Court.
A mail clerk for an Ohio Republican Senator wrote a blog about her sexual activities and conquests in D.C., including her juggling sexual relationships with six different men (at least one of them a co-worker) simultaneously. All of this was detailed in her blog and when I say "detailed", I mean there were lots of "details," including admissions that she was paid for sex by at least one of her paramours, that her current favorite was into spanking and other comments that provided sufficient identification that when the story went public, people got fired. Now, one of the affected individuals is suing not only his coworker for her invasion of his privacy and infliction of emotional distress, but also the publisher of a D.C. blog that picked up the coworker's story originally and gave it wide publication.
Yet another reason not to establish romantic liaisons in the workplace -- you never know where those fetishes will end up being published.