Cellphone privacy takes back seat in school division lawsuit

“The mistake, if a mistake was made, is in reading the contents of the cellphone then calling the local city police to take this young lad to a stolen vehicle to identify a vehicle,” said lawyer Marcel Simonot, on behalf of the child’s grandparents. They are also his guardians.

In his closing arguments he stated there were three issues with the incident.

First, he questioned whether the vice-principal or school staff had a legal right to read the texts.

Defence counsel Amanda Dunn said that action was not a privacy invasion because the unusual behaviour of the student when his phone was taken led Tournier to worry about the text. Specifically, he was worried the contents were a threat to safety at Riverside.

Dunn told the court past cases, including a Supreme Court ruling allowed a search of a phone’s contents when there is reasonable suspicion of a breach of school policy.

Simonot also asked whether it was lawful to the vice-principal to inform police about the contents of that phone.

Dunn’s counterpoint is that injury by way of punitive damages cannot be claimed when the outcome is not foreseeable.

In this case she said Tournier couldn’t not have foreseen an officer breaching police conduct. The lawsuit alleges the officer got the boy to text the sender back about where the stolen vehicle is and then took the boy in the police car to identify the vehicle.

The boy was allegedly seen by the person who texted him while in the police car.

The claim of $50,000 is not warranted because “not one shred” of evidence supports any damages, Dunn added.

It was unfortunate Tournier was ever named in the lawsuit because of the considerable stress and media attention it cause, she said in her closing arguments.

Simonot’s final issue pondered if allowing the officer to take the boy without guardian consent was legal.

After Dunn finished her arguments Simonot claimed Tournier had no freedom to allow the student to go with the officer, and that this was the “principal point” of the lawsuit.

He had earlier rescinded a claim of payment of special damages to cover travelling expenses for the grandparents. As defendents, they claimed they made trips from Kinistino and La Ronge to protect the child from possible retaliation.

Outside of court, Simonot described how the case relates to student privacy.

“I think the issue here is if a student brings a cellphone to school, and forget to leave it in his locker and it is taken away from him by his teacher for reasons of discipline, what right does the teacher or the school have to go into the cellphone or text messages to see what that particular student may have been up to,” he said.

When Dunn interviewed Monica Jones, who taught the student in 2010, she asked what the teacher would do with a note when passed in class.

“I do not think there’s a comparison between a note and a cellphone because a note is a note, it’s something you read and throw away. While a cellphone, there’s a permanent record of that conversation,” Simonot said in response.

Dunn declined to comment following the closing arguments.

The judge is reserving his decision until an unspecified date.

claskowski@panow.com

On Twitter: @chelsealaskowsk

by Chelsea Laskowski

Cellphone privacy takes back seat in school division lawsuit

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