Legal Matters: The Dangers of Social Media for Your Nonprofit

As a trial lawyer, I get excited when I find or receive Facebook and Twitter pages from my opponents in a lawsuit. People love to rant and rave about their jobs on social media. These posts usually contain a treasure trove of evidence that can be used in favor of, or against, a company.

Here’s a war story that will make you cringe. I represented an organization that was sued by a former employee. The executive director fired the employee for performance issues. The employee hired a lawyer who alleged that the company’s explanation for firing was pre-textual and the actual reason for termination was age discrimination. In discovery (where parties request and obtain relevant documents from the other side), I requested and obtained printouts of the employee’s Facebook posts. What we found was shocking — this employee had been disclosing the company’s confidential information and trade secrets for months, bragging about the company’s revenue numbers and plans for growth that were supposed to be confidential, on Facebook. This public disclosure of confidential information has serious implications to the company — trade secrets must be kept confidential, otherwise they’re no longer trade secrets.