Wrong Way: Partner Allegedly Reroutes Emails

Wrong Way: Partner Allegedly Reroutes Emails

A recently filed lawsuit by the Philadelphia Gun Club (PGC) and its present and past presidents takes aim at a Pennsylvania lawyer for allegedly rerouting a former partner’s emails to himself, thereby violating New Jersey’s Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act, the Pennsylvania Wiretap Act and federal law.

Per a report by the ABA Journal, which picked up the story from Law360, when Sean M. Corr left the soon-to-be disbanded firm of Corr Mitchell, he took the gun club’s case with him to his new practice, per his client’s instructions.

As part of his departure, Corr had instructed a New Jersey-based technology consultant to forward his emails to his new account. They never arrived. In January 2015, two months after Corr had departed for his new firm, Corr Law Offices, his former partner, Robert A. Mitchell, had instructed the same consultant to shut down Corr’s account.

Then, the suit alleges, Mitchell had a second email account in place that used Corr’s old email address. Emails were then routed to Mitchell’s personal server between February 2015 and June 2015. As a result, email senders to Corr’s old address were not alerted that the email was no longer in use. By June 2015, Corr had grown suspicious and contacted Mitchell, which launched a look into what had transpired.

The ABA contacted Mitchell for comment. He stated that the filing of the suit was not only a surprise to him, but also it had misrepresented the facts. He stated that the suit arose out of the dissolution of the shared law firm, a matter that is pending before a Pennsylvania state court and in which the judge had found that neither had Mitchell read the rerouted emails nor had any ethics been breached.

Per Law360, PGC asked the court for a declaratory judgment to clarify how it should pay Corr Mitchell as Mitchell was to receive his share.

Law360 cleverly concluded its reporting with the result of emailing Corr’s old address: an automatic reply that the address could not be found.

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