This term, the New Jersey Supreme Court will hear State v. Saavedra, 433 N.J. Super. 501 (App. Div. 2013), certif. granted, 217 N.J. 289 (March 14, 2014), a case in which the Appellate Division held that a public employee who brought a discrimination claim under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD) and allegedly stole hundreds of pages of highly confidential documents from her public employer, was not engaged in protected activity and could be criminally indicted even though she stole the documents for use in her lawsuit.
Saavedra allows the court to revisit its holding in Quinlan v. Curtiss Wright Corp., 204 N.J. 239 (2010), that an employee engaged in “protected activity” under the LAD when she stole confidential documents from her employer and used them in furtherance of her lawsuit. In so doing, Quinlan ignored the rule of law, including property rights, discovery rules and the Rules of Professional Conduct. Saavedra provides an opportunity to temper that decision.
