ATLANTA (WBAP/KLIF News) — Warning: the next time you get an accidental phone call from someone who doesn’t know he called you, hang up. Listening can get you in legal trouble.
While talking with his wife James Stephens went on a 12-minute rant about his boss without knowing he had accidentally pocket-dialed his boss, Mike Coan, who heard the whole conversation. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution doesn’t report exactly what Mr. Stephens said about his boss but it must have been bad because he lost his job over it.
Now, Stephens has filed a legal complaint saying Coan violated his privacy and Georgia’s eavesdropping law by not hanging up when he realized the call was a mistake.
The law in question is specifically designed to prevent people from recording conversations without the knowledge of the other person. A civil rights attorney told the Journal-Constitution that butt-dialing may be a different matter.
Coan, who oversees workers’ compensation claims, says he heard that call while acting “within the scope of his official duties,” according to his attorney.
The lawyer is also arguing that Coan wasn’t terminated, per se, but rather, he was given a choice to resign or be fired because Stephens’ opinions and criticisms of his boss made it clear that they “could no longer have an effective working relationship and Coan could not trust Stephens as a subordinate.”
