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Essay / Employment Law Case Study - 814
The relationship between an employee and an employer has not always been healthy, which is why laws have been created to protect employees. There are several examples of the impact employment case law can have on a business, although the case City of Ontario, California v. Quon (2010) provided much-needed interpretation in the area of employee privacy. The Ontario Police Service provided text pagers to officers and, after months of overruns, decided to pull text message transcripts to determine whether the text message limit should be increased (City of Ontario, California v. Quon, 2010). By extracting the transcripts, the Department discovered that many of the messages sent were not work-related, even though Quon was on a work schedule (City of Ontario, California v. Quon, 2010). The Department provided a copy of the computer use policy to employees prior to distribution of the pager. The court determined that searching for messages on company-owned devices was reasonable (City of Ontario, California v. Quon, 2010). An important point in this case was the computer use policy provided. Companies are able to monitor their employees' devices and work accounts, although a clear and concise policy on the subject will help clarify expectations around