My good friend at work is dating a guy that is also a coworker and at first I thought this guy was pretty cool.
As it turns out, he’s batshit insane and a horrible human being.
It has come to my attention recently that he had been spreading rumors and information about me and sexual identity (Bi), outing me in order to manipulate the work place into being “against me”. Including outing me to close work friends of mine that I was keeping that part of my life private from out of fear of losing their friendship.
I have already gone through HR, and that employee is currently being investigated, but the more I find out, the worse it gets.
This guy has been threatened by my friendship with his girlfriend, my close friend who I have known longer than him, and without either of our knowledge, he installed a spy app on her phone which gave him access to every text, snap, instagram, Facebook, phone calls, and even what she does online. I know this because she came to me saying her phone was acting up, and me being ex-IT, found the app he installed on her phone.
Recently I just heard from another coworker that he has been telling people of my gay sexual relationships which I do not recall ever telling him. He has also told coworkers about things I have texted her verbatim, so I am starting to think that he may have possibly gathered information about my sex life through text messages to her, without either of us knowing he could read them, and has been telling my other work colleagues.
I know this guy isn’t coming back to the work place, but I feel so crossed that I’m not sure even that’s enough. I want to know if, because he obtained that information illegally, I could file a lawsuit against him as well.
I have felt so violated all this week because of this guy, someone who I thought I was friends with and even defended at times, stabbed me in the back and did this horrible thing to me.
Obviously this is lemmy and I don’t expect there to be any lawyers here, but do you think I may have a case?
I’m not a lawyer and you should go talk to several. Most states have several ways to find lawyers. If you have any friends who are lawyers, describe this to them and ask if they can refer you to anyone. Every state in the US has a bar association. Their websites have search engines for all the lawyers licensed to practice in their state. Make appointments with a few of them. You don’t have to pay for the initial consultation. You explain the circumstances and they tell you what your legal options are and what it will cost you. Pick which ever one you want to work with (if any).
Talk to them about this but here’s my basic understanding of how it breaks down.
There are basically two avenues; criminal and civil.
In order for there to be a criminal prosecution, they would need to have broken some law and it needs to be bad enough that a government attorney is willing to spend their time going after it. There are a whole bunch of federal laws around phones and telecommunications. You’re probably familiar with a bunch of them from your IT work. Chances are pretty good that they broke some law. If you give the police your evidence they may care enough to go after it.
In order for there to be a civil suit, they need to have done something that harmed you, in a quantifiable way and they need to have done it in an illegal way. This does seem like their methods met the threshold. The harder part might be establishing harm. Feeling violated is hard to quantify, unless there’s some statutory compensation. If you can point at something like lost wages or lost economic opportunities it’s probably stronger.