Hahahaha! Anyway, take this truth from me (borrowing a sisters judgement that I hold dear, and believe to be true): Facebook is an enclosure. To be on Twitter space/street is to communicate with the universe directly, and at the speed of light. JUDGE FAILS TO UNDERSTAND PUBLIC NATURE OF TWITTER Game Retail Ltd v Laws UKEAT/0188/14; Unfair dismissal/conduct In Game Retail Ltd v Laws UKEAT/0188/14 Mr Laws worked as risk and loss prevention investigator for Game Retail, a games retailer with over 300 stores across the UK. In that position he was required to investigate losses, fraud and theft and to conduct audits in those stores for which he had responsibility. Games Retail’s stores depend upon Twitter and other social media as tools for marketing and communications. Each store had its own Twitter profile and feed, to which the manager and/or deputy manager had access for posts. A large number of customers followed their local stores on Twitter, and their posts could therefore appear on the store Twitter feed. Mr Laws opened his own Twitter account and began to follow GR’s stores for which he had responsibility in order to be able to monitor their tweets to check for any inappropriate activity. He then was followed on Twitter by a number of GR stores. It was then reported to GR that Mr Laws had himself posted a number of offensive tweets. An investigation was undertaken and 28 tweets were identified as offensive. The investigator found that Mr Laws’s tweets were in the public domain, clearly accessible by stores and that some were of an abusive nature. He was suspended then dismissed for gross misconduct following a disciplinary hearing. An ET judge held that Mr Laws had been unfairly dismissed because GR’s belief did not fall within a band of reasonable responses of the hypothetical reasonable employer. The ET held that the Twitter account was intended for activity outside work and he was only engaged in tweeting the offensive material in his own time and no customers or other employees would have seen the tweets. The EAT disagreed. It held that the ET’s assumption that Mr Laws’s followers would be restricted to social acquaintances was wrong. The stores that followed Mr Laws would have seen the tweets. Further, Twitter could be accessed freely by customers. It is clear that the ET judge did not understand the public nature of Twitter. The EAT declined to give any guidance on social media but did point out that factors such as whether the employer had a social media policy and whether there was potential damage to customer relationships might be relevant in similar cases. bailii.org/uk/cases/UKEAT/2014/0188_14_0311.html John Mehrzad (instructed by Game Retail Ltd) for Game Retail Ltd Matthew Collins (instructed by Peter Dunn & Co) for Mr Laws Kaltoft v Municipality of Billund (Case C-354/13), Equality At 2010 & Discrimination/disability Source: EmpLaw
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 21:37:56 +0000