Daughter's Facebook Brag Costs Her Family $80,000

[question everything]

According to the Miami Herald, Patrick Snay, 69, was the headmaster at Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami for several years, but in 2010, the school didn’t renew his contract. Snay sued his former employer for age discrimination and won a settlement of $80,000 in November 2011. The agreement contained a standard confidentiality clause, prohibiting Snay or the school from talking about the case.

However, Snay’s daughter, Dana, now at Boston College and a part-time Starbucks barista, couldn’t resist bragging about the case on Facebook. “Mama and Papa Snay won the case against Gulliver,” she wrote. “Gulliver is now officially paying for my vacation to Europe this summer. SUCK IT.”

Dana has 1,200 Facebook friends, many of whom are current and former Gulliver students and news of the post made its way back to the school’s lawyers, who appealed the verdict. The Third District Court of Appeal tossed out the $80,000 discrimination suit earlier this week. “Snay violated the agreement by doing exactly what he had promised not to do,” Judge Linda Ann Wells wrote. “His daughter then did precisely what the confidentiality agreement was designed to prevent.”

(snip)

Oh, and that European vacation? Probably not happening now.

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/-80-000-facebook-dana-snay-settlement-confidentiality-agreement-164326139.html

[MrScorpio]

1. Sorry that Pops is the big loser in this, but to lil' Miss Dana...

[Gman]

2. Your European vacation?

Suck it!

[Liberal_in_LA]

3. wow.

[Mike Daniels]

4. Did a lot of stupid things when I was younger.....

Costing my family $80,000 by being an idiot fortunately wasn't one of them.

[Tom Ripley]

5. Looks like someone may be picking up extra shifts at Starbucks

[Xithras]

6. Ouch. But they voided it because HE told his daughter. Not directly because of her comment.

My immediate thought after reading the OP was "How can a confidentiality agreement bind an adult child who is not party to the lawsuit?"

Turned out that it didn't. Snay told his daughter that they won. The school successfully argued that telling his child about the settlement was itself a violation of the settlement agreement.

The Facebook post was merely the avenue through which they discovered the violation. They didn't take the money away because of HER comment, but because HER comment revealed her FATHERS violation of the agreement.

So, technically, he lost the money himself. His daughter just failed to cover up her dads violation.

[question everything]

7. If your parent would had settled similarly, wouldn't he have told you?

If you had settlement like that, wouldn't you tell your children?

In our family there were no money secrets. Mostly because there was not much to even discuss..

So it is understandably that he told his daughter and, perhaps other close family members. But he should have also mentioned the confidentiality agreement.

I don't "do" Facebook, nor twitter and people should be careful what they post.

[Xithras]

10. Oh, I agree, but it was still a failure on the fathers part.

You don't agree to a settlement that says "I'll tell nobody", and then start telling your family members. If you want to be able to tell your family members, you need to negotiate an agreement that says "I'll tell nobody outside my immediate family". A settlement is a legal agreement, and you shouldn't accept a settlement that imposes terms you can't live with.

If you agree to an absolute confidentiality clause that you have no intention of sticking to, then it's your own fault if you get nailed for violating it.

[derby378]

8. Which means that whenever anyone offers to settle, READ THE FINE PRINT

Your First Amendment rights could be stripped from you without you even knowing it.

[onenote]

9. If you sign a settlement of a legal claim read the whole damn thing

and make sure you understand it.

No sympathy here. And not a First Amendment issue. Just a contractual one.