AIBU to think my ex employers can’t do this?

[Wowsharona]

I recently accepted a settlement to leave my job after discriminatory comments were made to me on two occasions after announcing my pregnancy.

it was a good offer so didn’t want to go into a long drawn out tribunal process whilst pregnant.

I left last week, today I received a message from an ex colleague asking if my mother was ok. I was confused as my mother died years ago in my early teens.

turns out after I had been paid off and left (was an abrupt leaving due to the situation) 2 days after I had officially gone an email was sent from my work email address saying goodbye to everyone and telling them I was leaving to take care of my sick and elderly mother!

it ended with ‘I’m sorry this is abrupt but for my own mental health I am requesting no one reach out via linked in as I’d like to put all my energy into my family’

I’m absolutely fuming, AIBU to think although yes my email address is technically their property they can’t pretend to be me and email everyone?

Love Mumsnet but it’s awful for legal and employment advice.
@Wowsharona
Are you a member of a union? If not contact ACAS, and Pregnant then screwed.

I think we can both agree that Court action for defamation is a rich mans game partly because it pulls in witnesses who dont want to "play"?

Future employers unless they were the recipient of the email
That is a publication argument? The company as a legal being publishes to their employees one of whom communicates the publication to the OP

Future employers unless they were the recipient of the email and knew the OP’s mother to be dead, aren’t going to come to the conclusion that she lied about her reasons for leaving the job
The risk is word of mouth via Linkedin which is about building professional reputation and using personal contact list crossover.
OP has already networked with the employees on this third party system, in some industries asking a friend directly or even asking a friend to ask their friend (<the Linkedin model) is the problem.

On the DP issue, the mother’s DP rights are not engaged because she is deceased
How the company prove that DM is not sick rather deceased and no rights attached to her medical data?

Using a SAR results in the company producing the email themselves.

@AnSolas I’ll try and answer your questions but I’m not sure I completely understand what you are asking for some of them. But will give it a go!

1. Yes a defamation action is usually outside the scope of most people’s pockets - another reason why I don’t think it’s the right response in these circumstances
2. This one I don’t understand what you are asking! The employer is the publisher. The recipients of the email are the publishees. Publication just to the OP isn’t actionable. The employer is liable in respect of publication to the recipients of the email. If the email was forwarded by an original recipient to a future employer (probably unlikely) the person who forwarded the email would be liable not the employer.
3. again not sure what you are asking here from a legal analysis perspective. For the email to bear an innuendo meaning that the OP had lied about her reasons for leaving her previous job, the person to whom the email was published would need to know that the mother had previously died. The fact that others talk about OP’s reasons for leaving the previous role in the future on LinkedIn or elsewhere is relevant to the extent that it establishes loss (one of the heads of damages in the privacy claim I keep recommending) but it doesn’t go to what a court would determine the natural and ordinary meaning of the original email to be.
4. the dead mother can’t assert her DP rights nor can the the OP assert those rights on behalf of the dead mother. The only DP rights which the OP can assert are in respect of information which relates to her. ie in this case her dates of employment, her caring responsibilities and her mental health. The OP can make a SAR for the email but this will be in her own name but not her mother’s.

I’m conscious that the OP hasn’t come back to the thread for several days so none of this may be helpful to her though!

The OP's former employers already paid up instead of going to court. I'm sure they can be encouraged to do that again.

@Katrinawaves On point 4 the company has data obligations if the OP makes a complaint over not been given the email or on its content the ICO will look at the company's data obligations for the information on the OP's file. So the company cant hide behind the excuse of DM being a third party data subject when they produced the email "from" the OP.

Anyway hope the OP is busy with her solicitor.

Don’t reply to your former colleague. Contact a solicitor or ACAS has others mentioned, if you can.

Yes I agree with that. The most they could do would be to redact the identifying reference to the mother but they would still need to send the remainder of the email.

We were at cross purposes on that one because earlier in the thread someone else had suggested making a DSAR on behalf of the mother and complaining about misuse of fe mother’s sensitive personal data and neither of those are clearly possible.

May have been part of my posting (with poor wording) about the problem the company have on proving sourcing and permission for holding the data plus fair processing by sending the email 👍

I had something similar many years ago. I was dealing with sexual harassment by a boss and a co-worker. An attorney got involved. I got a settlement with the caveat that I could not work for them again (as if I would want to). They were large enough and had enough subsidiaries that would not be obviously them, that we put in the word “knowingly.” So even though I was harassed, the bad actors kept their jobs and I lost mine.

Oh my god!!! That is actually diabolical, I'm sure they can't do that. I would 1000% be fuming.

Surely such an agreement binds both parties to "no comment"?

It is completely unacceptable for the company to make up a false reason for your departure.