Employment lawyers in New Jersey will be following this case closely. The New Jersey Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by a former Curtiss-Wright Corp. employee whose $10.6 million sex-discrimination judgment was reversed because she shared confidential company records with her lawyer. The issue before the court is whether a worker's acquiring of company information in the normal course of her job, and communicating it to her employment attorney in her discrimination case, is protected activity for which retaliation is actionable.
Through her human-resources position, plaintiff Joyce Quinlan copied more than 1,800 pages of the company's personnel files, including salary records. She handed the files over to her lawyer in support of her suit. The trial judge instructed the jury that it was permissible for the lawyer to use the confidential company documents and that the company could not fire the plaintiff on that basis. The Appellate Division reversed. The New Jersey Appellate Division found that the trial court judge improperly distinguished between copying the documents and using them in litigation.
