A Canadian woman has sued Rogers Wireless over privacy concerns. Sounds normal so far, right? Let’s add a little color to the sentence, then gauge your reaction. A Canadian woman has sued Rogers Wireless for inadvertently disclosing an affair she was having, citing privacy concerns. Hmm, that’s a little less normal, now isn’t it?
But that’s the story!
A Canadian woman had a cellphone with Rogers. Then she got married, and her husband opened up a landline and Internet connection for the house. Rogers then combined the bills—the woman’s cellphone, the shared landline and Internet connection—into one invoice that was sent to the husband at their domicile.
Now, was Rogers “in the right” when it combined the cellphone bill, which was originally in the woman’s name, with the newly opened landline and Internet connection?
Moving on, the husband, flipping through one month’s invoice, noticed several, hour-long conversations that were with one particular phone number. He called the number, getting the person on the other end of the line to confirm that, indeed, there had been an affair.
The husband left, then the woman claims her life fell apart. Among other things, her work performance suffered, which caused her to lose her job. For that she wants $600,000 from Rogers, technically for “invasion of privacy and breach of contract.” The contract being her cellphone service that she never requested be billed to her husband.
Time to play armchair analyst. Did Rogers do anything wrong here, and if so, does it owe the woman any money, specifically $600,000? I can see the woman’s point in that her cellphone was her cellphone, and Rogers probably didn’t have to combine it with the family’s landline and Internet connection. Does that warrant a breach of contract? I’m not a Canadian contract lawyer, so beats me. At the same time, Rogers wasn’t responsible for the woman’s affair, and it certainly wasn’t responsible for the woman reacting in the manner she did, causing her life to fall apart.
Could the woman have been caught, gotten a divorce, then moved on with her life? You know, be an adult about the situation? I suppose, but then again I have no emotional attachment to the story.