In the “Alice in Wonderland” world of employment law, one of the hard parts of an in-house lawyer’s job is telling an internal client that something that makes zero practical sense makes complete legal sense. For example, an employee may be able to turn over confidential company information and then prevail against that same company in an anti-retaliation or wrongful-discharge suit. Wait, what? Have courts really made such decisions? The answer is yes, many times.
Look at Sharon Randolph and Tami Thompson v. ADT Security Services Inc . (2010), out of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. In its order the court sketched out the facts: Randolph and Thompson went to work for ADT selling home security services. They alleged ADT made promises to them regarding commissions and bonuses. When the promises were purportedly broken, they filed wage complaints with a state agency. But they attached client contracts to the complaints that contained confidential information, including customer names, addresses, phone numbers and payment information. Some of the information revealed the location of alarm panels and alarm passwords.
