‘Textual’ harassment is becoming a much more prevalent issue, as Texas Lawyer reports, but in-house counsel in particular need to be aware of the dangers and pitfalls in retreiving text messages as part of any discrimination or harassment lawsuit.
Imagine a supervisor making an inappropriate remark to one of his direct reports in an after-hours conversation. If he made the comment verbally, and the employee then reported it to the supervisor’s employer, any resulting litigation would have involved the usual “he said, she said” situation, in which lawyers would have challenged the employee’s credibility. […]