Legal Question in Employment Law in Oregon

Re: computer file and new employee contact

Your employer would likely be liable to you for �intentional interference in economic relations� if it tried to get back at you by contacting your new employer. To establish such a claim, you would have to show that your employer intentionally tried to interfere with your new employment (an economic relationship) and in fact did so by way of wrongful intent or wrongful means. Truthful information is not wrongful means, but I see no proper intent in passing on that information.

Also, I don�t understand why you cannot delete the file. So long as the document is exclusively personal, why don�t you just delete it while you remain an employee? If the document is business related in any way, of course, you should not disturb it because it belongs to your current employer. Also, a departing employee must be careful not to act contrary to his or her currently employer�s interests. Every employee owes a duty of loyalty to the employer. Any destruction of company property (including electronic files) would be unlawful.

NOTE: The above does not constitute legal opinion and is offered for the purposes of discussion only. The law differs in every jurisdiction, and you should not rely on any opinion except that of an attorney you have retained, who has a professional duty to advise you after being fully

informed of all the pertinent facts and who is familiar with the applicable law.