Video Surveillance In The Workplace And Employee Privacy Rights

By Nancy N. Lubrano

August 3, 2009

Employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the workplace.  Any intrusion on the privacy rights must be sufficiently offensive or serious to give rise to liability.
In Hernandez, et al. v. Hillsides, Inc., two plaintiffs sought recovery for invasion of privacy and emotional distress damages when they discovered that their employer had installed a hidden surveillance camera in their work space without notifying them.

Hillsides, Inc. operated a private nonprofit residential facility for neglected and abused children, including victims of sexual abuse. When Hillsides learned that an unknown person was accessing a computer in the work space late and night, after plaintiffs had left the premises, to view pornography, it installed the camera. The California Supreme Court held that, although the camera intruded on plaintiffs’ reasonable expectation of privacy, the intrusion was not sufficiently offensive or serious to warrant recovery because the surveillance was "drastically limited in nature and scope, exempting plaintiffs from its reach." Particularly, the surveillance was never activated while plaintiffs were in their work space. Actionable invasions of privacy must be "highly offensive" to a reasonable person. Plaintiffs could not establish that the intrusion was actionable.

Despite this ruling, California employers must remain mindful that employees retain privacy rights in the workplace.  As such, surveillance in the workplace must be appropriately tailored and implemented to avoid actionable intrusions of privacy.

Wesierski & Zurek LLP regularly advises California employers regarding workplace policies and implementation within the parameters of applicable law.  We also specialize in defending employers against all types of employment-related claims.