Oh, this is so awkward.
A teenage girl’s bragging Facebook status has cost her family $80,000, after she violated a court’s confidentiality clause.
The girl’s father, 69-year-old Patrick Snay, sued Miami’s Gulliver Preparatory School in 2010 – on the basis that the school had refused to renew his position as headmaster because he was ‘too old’.
Gulliver settled in 2011. He was awarded $10,000 in back pay, and a cool $80,000 settlement. Not too shabby. The terms of the agreement? That Snay and his wife, who had been involved in proceedings, would keep the settlement private.
All would have been well for the Snays, had daughter Dana Snay not taken to Facebook with the details of the pay out — only four days after the case was settled.
She wrote:
“Mama and Papa Snay won the case against Gulliver.
Gulliver is now officially paying for my vacation to Europe this summer. SUCK IT.”
Dana has 1200 friends on Facebook – many of whom attend the school in question. As inflammatory or controversial posts on the internet tend to do, the Facebook status started being shared. Eventually, it made its way back to the school’s lawyers, who succeeded in having the settlement thrown out of court this week.
Judge Linda Ann Wells said, “Snay violated the agreement by doing exactly what he had promised not to do … His daughter then did precisely what the confidentiality agreement was designed to prevent.”
The Miami Herald reported that Snay said he had to tell his daughter about the settlement, because she had “psychological scars” from her time at the school.
“We knew what the restrictions were, yet we needed to tell her something,” Papa Snay said.
Still, it probably goes without saying that when you or family members are involved in court proceedings, it’s best not to go sharing details of said court proceedings on social media. It’s an expensive lesson for Dana Snay to learn.
Although current reports cannot confirm this detail, we suspect that Dana Snay isn’t going to Europe anymore. Further details as they emerge.
Mamamia originally saw this story in The Miami Herald.
So. All we can really take away from this, is that it’s pretty important to teach your kids about appropriate use of social media, no?
Top Comments
Some of the really personal stuff on FB is a bit of a shock. You see some middle aged women chatting to obvious catfish people, the youngsters swearing their heads off and boasting about things that may come back to haunt them in the future. Posts about hating their jobs (like the boss can't see your posts). So much private stuff that should not be there. FB can ruin their lives.
Snay was not necessarily the victim of age discrimination or anything else.The school chose to settle, perhaps because there was actual discrimination, or perhaps because fighting the case successfully might have cost more than the terms of the settlement. Sometimes a party will settle without any admission of guilt for the aforementioned reason.
The very existence of a confidentiality clause is designed to prevent the hasty assumption that since a party paid a given sum of money, the party is guilty as charged, i.e. "Papa and Mama Snay won the case against Gulliver." Not only is Dana Snay's Facebook post prima facie evidence of her parents' violation of the confidentiality clause to which they agreed; the statement is, in and of itself, factually inaccurate.
Is this the one time it's acceptable to taze your kid? 80k is a lot. But that settlement is pretty dodgy too, he still deserves the money since he was discriminated against. I take it he can't restart a trial?