I recently received this legalese at the end of an email from a lawyer. I gather this means I can’t legally take anything from the email, quote it, forward it, etc.
Is this really the law? What is the punishment for, say, forwarding the email?
Have I broken the law just by quoting the material here?
This is the only portion of this statement that concerns itself with the US Code… No where else within this legalese does it mention the “law”. This Privacy Act is intended to prevent the intentional interception of oral and electronic communications. It particulary applies to interception (wire taps, ect.) by Law Enforcement.
If you are bored this weekend,you can read the act at : http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/ch119.html.
Start a statement with reference to a US Code section then ramble on. Does make it appear that the law is written as the attorney states.
Disclosure is limited by the Law Firm, not the Law.
Review or distribution by others is prohibited by the Law Firm, not the Law.
If you forwarded information contained in a confidential Email, that was not meant for you, to others, I don’t think you will find Law Enforcement banging down your door. You may however find yourself subject to civil actions if any loss or damage occurred due to your actions.
Thanks, barker.
And here I was, all worried and stuff…
BANG BANG BANG
Oh, no! At the door! The G-Men ar
Per my various and sundry lawyer teachers, law firms will routinely put a disclaimer along these lines on all electronically transmitted communications (including faxes). This is so lawyer-client privilege is not waived or violated should the communication accidentally get into the wrong hands.
I used to work for insurance companies, and we would also routinely put on faxes something like “This communication is intended for the named recipient only. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact us at xxx-xxxx and destroy this copy.” Doctors and hospitals would also include similar wording. Pretty much for insulation from liability if they or we faxed confidential information to the wrong number.
IANAL, but I don’t believe you can unilaterally bind another party to a contract. These email footers essentially constitute a non-disclosure agreement, and you cannot enforce that as a contract unless I have agreed to it. If you accidentally send me something, you might be charged with violating lawyer-client privilege, but you cannot bind me.
Compare to industrial espionage cases where an insider is prosecuted for disclosing information to a competitor or journalist. The discloser can be sued because they are (presumably) bound by an NDA, but you can’t sue the journalist for publishing the information. The journalist isn’t required to keep your secrets for you.
When I get emails with this kind of footer, it amuses me because I’m pretty sure it’s unenforceable and it’s usually trivial nonsense not worth disclosing. OTOH, I angers me because it’s an example of lawyers spouting important-sounding jargon trying to bully people. I think the world would be a better place if people (lawyers) who made this kind of unsubstantiated threat could be prosecuted.
If you really believe these email footers are enforceable, please let me know. I’d love to spam a few hundred thousand people with an email that included “by reading this email, you agree to pay me $1000”. If you can enforce a unilateral NDA, I should be able to enforce a unilateral sales contract.
Regardless of the actual legal enforceability, I wonder sometimes whether the footers are intended more to discourage accidental recipients from taking advantage of the contents.
Well, there’s agency law but I don’t think that’s what you’re really talking about.
I didn’t say they were enforcable in terms of contract law. It’s a CYA for attorneys and others who transmit privileged information electronically. Privilege in general is waived if information is communicated to a third party. If your attorney emails you “I put your confession to those three murders in a locked file cabinet” and it gets sent accidentally to a third party, the lawyer’s going to try to argue that privilege wasn’t waived because of the disclaimer. From speaking to some paralegals here in madison, it’s far from settled law as to whether such a disclaimer is sufficient to maintain privilege.
To digress, I have heard of people responding to spam with something like “additional emails from you will be processed with a processing fee of $500 per piece and by sending additional email after this notice you agree to these terms.” Some who have said they’ve done this have said they’ve gotten judgments against spammers in small claims court but who knows if that’s true.
Wow.
So could I include that line in the returns to spammers and start making some cash if they repeat their spam?
Which means the “contract” is enacted by some action of the second party after notification by the first party. That’s a darn sight closer to contractual agreement than a one-time unilateral message saying “I hereby bind you to do such and such just because I say so.”
I’ve seen reference to the footers you mention, but I’ve never seen that anyone successfully got a judgement against a spammer. Can you provide a precedent?
All it means is if you USE that information in some way, example in a court of law, the person who sent it can say look, we put that on the bottom, he can’t use that, and you will get canned about that time. Otherwise if you don’t use the information, nobody cares, its just a standard cover-your-ass deal, heh.