Friend in bad way over something minor?

[RoryJ]

Hello there,

I have a friend who is completely freaking out and all the help he needs seem to be close on the wknd. If you have five minutes to take a look at the below, it would be so appreciated.

The day after being terminated from his job, he forwarded about 30 emails from his work email with the intent to make sure he hadn’t lost his mind and make sure his memories were correct, and also demonstrate to his old employer that he shouldn’t have been terminated. The emails apparently contained some personal data of other people, but as of yet they are still sitting in his email inbox unread. Sadly, he has been diagnosed as having a psychotic episode over the last three days.

I’m really sorry to ask but I’m a bit desperate as nothing is open until Monday. All he wants to know is it possible they will change his termination to gross misconduct, will they sue him or try to get him to pay them for doing this and is it likely he will get a criminal record because of this? Once again I’m sorry for asking but he’s not in a good way at all. One last point, his contract does say he cannot “disclose or misuse” this type of information, would sending it to himself be either?

[MIKE770]

ULA may pop in here

[ULA]

Sorry to hear about the situation your friend is in.

I need to preface that my thoughts are based on a generalisation as I there is no information on what policies your friend's employer has in place regarding computer usage/security of data, sending emails to personal email addresses, other than what you have stated in the last sentance of your post. However, my experience is that his actions would go against the majority of company policies and not helped by the fact that some of those emails contain personal data regarding other employees and this is potentially confirmed by what is stated in his contract.

If his employment has been terminated again, from that terminology it sounds that he was dismissed by his employer, then I presume he is either on pay in lieu of notice or working his notice, not sure which. If due to the nature of what has how happened they deem his actions to be gross misconduct then yes they could now summarily dismiss him, which means there would be no entitlement to notice pay.

His only potential mitigating defence would be whether he could get any medical evidence to validate that his actions were due to this "psychotic episode".

What I have set out is potentially the worst case scenario and is based on the limited information from your post. Has there been any contact yet by his employer in regard to these emails?