Discovery of Plaintiff’s Current Employment Records in Suit Against Former Employer
By In lawsuit brought by plaintiff against her former employer, the former employer served a subpoena for plaintiff’s personnel records on plaintiff’s new employer. Plaintiff moved to quash and/or for a protective order. The Court held that the employment records of plaintiff’s current employer would not provide any information relating to whether plaintiff had previously been fired by the former employer. Hood v. Fiberweb, Inc., 2010 WL 4102219 (M.D. Tenn. Oct. 18, 2010).
However, in another case in the Middle District of Tennessee, I represented an employer who was allowed (over the objection of the plaintiff) to not only subpoena records from a former employee’s current employer, but was also allowed to depose individuals at the current employer who were involved in the decision to hire my client’s former employee. The difference between the two cases is that in my case, there was a key factual dispute as to whether the employee had voluntarily resigned or been terminated. Thus it was relevant what the plaintiff had told his subsequent employer about how and why his employment relationship with my client had ended. Statements to the subsequent employer were admissions against interest to the extent he told them he had voluntarily resigned, as my client contended. In short, as with most evidentiary issues, the circumstances of the case can lead to different outcomes.
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