Glassdoor Users Fight Dismissal of Email Leak Class Action

The plaintiff in a class action lawsuit alleging job review website Glassdoor exposed 600,000 users to retaliation by inadvertently disclosing their email addresses said the case should not be dismissed.

Glassdoor argued that the class action lawsuit should be kicked out of court because the plaintiff couldn’t establish harm. 

Plaintiff Melissa Levine fought back, arguing that the Class may feel financial harm or harm to their reputations.

Glassdoor also claimed that Levine brought harm upon herself by identifying herself in interviews in the media. The company says that the plaintiff is only speculating injuries, but does not show any actual harm caused by the alleged email leak.

Levine fought back in a memo, stating “the revelation of this information puts plaintiff and putative class members at risk of employment retaliation and damage to their professional reputation, as well as their statutory right to privacy.”

“Glassdoor subscribers share their opinions about their current and previous employers on its online bulletin board subject to the promise that their personal information will be kept private and their posts anonymous,” continues Levine. “The publication of plaintiff and the putative class’s personally identifying information has made that private information publicly available and compromised the anonymity they were promised.”

The class action lawsuit alleged that hundreds of thousands of Glassdoor members’ email addresses were disclosed in a mass email the company sent in July of this year. 

Glassdoor is an online resource for employees to look up and share information about companies and businesses, including salary information, workplace conditions, and supervisors.

The website is meant to be anonymous, alleged the class action, and without that anonymity, members are exposed to violations of privacy and repercussions at work.

“The entire Glassdoor business model and experience is built on its purported acknowledgement that user privacy is sacrosanct and it will protect the identity of users at all costs. Now, when Glassdoor itself is the perpetrator of the unlawful release of subscriber information, not only has it disengaged from its promise to protect, but now disclaims the existence of the very same injury it [once] apologized for,” argued the plaintiff. 

According to the class action, Glassdoor exposed its users’ email addresses when it sent a mass email without blind copying email recipients. The class action seeks to represent all individuals registered with Glassdoor and whose email addresses were exposed as well as a subclass of California residents.

The plaintiff alleges that Glassdoor violated its users’ rights to privacy as well as state and federal privacy and communications laws. The plaintiff is seeking compensatory, statutory and punitive damages, restitution of Glassdoor’s revenues, and an order forbidding Glassdoor from continuing the allegedly unlawful conduct at issue.

Levine is represented by Mark J. Geragos, Ben Meiselas and Mark Bolin of Geragos & Geragos PC.

The Glassdoor Privacy Rights Class Action Lawsuit is Levine v. Glassdoor Inc., Case No. 2:16-cv-05696, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.