united-states defamation workplace
Can a company use private Slack conversations for a lawsuit against you?
<p>Can a company use private Slack conversations for a lawsuit against you? I work at a company where there's a lot of toxicity and a lot of people seems to be unqualified for their jobs, which leads to a very high turnover. 15 people left over the span of a year. And I did mention to some people that some people seem to be highly unqualified from experience. I am wondering if that can be used against me somehow even if I said what I felt was the absolute truth. I don't think it's necessarily a defamation case, but I don't see what other reason I might get sued for.</p>

<p>Unless obtained illegally, a private Slack conversation is admissible evidence if it is relevant, in any kind of lawsuit. Even if it is obtained illegally, in a civil case it may still be admissible as evidence and a balancing test between the harm of the illegality and the contribution the evidence would make to discerning the truth of a material issue applies and it isn't automatically inadmissible as evidence.</p>
<p>Whether it would be relevant, and to what, depends upon the nature of the lawsuit and the overall facts.</p>

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<p>Can a company use private Slack conversations for a lawsuit against you?</p>
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<p>It depends on whether the circumstances and the parties to the conversation imply that the conversation is covered by something like the attorney-client privilege.</p>
<p><em>Statements of opinion</em> are not actionable, but false <em>statements of fact</em> are. The terms of your expression(s) are relevant for ascertaining whether the statements are of fact even if framed/disguised as opinion.</p>
<p>If you have evidence that your statements are truthful, the counterparty is unlikely to prevail even if your expressions are statements of fact.</p>
