‘Thrown under a bus’, Slater + Gordon executive set to sue over hoax email
The executive who says she was falsely accused of sending a ‘malicious’ email to Slater + Gordon staff is expected to take legal action against the top-tier law firm after it failed to protect her.
The executive who says she was falsely accused of sending a “malicious” email to Slater + Gordon staff is expected to take legal action against the top-tier law firm after it allowed the crisis to escalate despite clear early indications the email had been manipulated.
Former interim chief people officer Mari Ruiz-Matthyssen is understood to be upset that the firm made her “the sacrificial lamb” after failing to quickly and decisively state she was not involved. Ms Ruiz-Matthyssen has vehemently denied sending the email and an attached spreadsheet which revealed the salaries of more than 900 employees, claiming a “a cursory examination of the email and its attachment gave a clear indication as to the likely identity of the sender”.
Several sources believe the author of the document was an ex-employee “with an axe to grind”.
The author of the email appeared to have inside information about private dinners at the home of chief executive Dina Tutungi, illnesses suffered by staff, rivalries between named individuals, investigations into cases of inappropriate conduct, planned redundancies and even gossip about which board member “they will ditch this year”.
The metadata in the Excel spreadsheet appears to identify a former member of staff as the creator of the document but that person may not be the author of the email, or even of the spreadsheet if the data has been manipulated.
The spreadsheet is understood to be an amalgamation of two documents containing information on salaries and bonuses current at November 2024.
The staff email list was also from November 2024, so employees who started since that date were not on the spreadsheet and did not receive the all-staff email.
Legal sources said Ms Ruiz-Matthyssen may have a strong case, given the firm’s apparent failure to guard both its payroll information and its email system, allowing an outside email account to blind-copy hundreds of staff.
One legal source told The Australian: “They allowed this to get out of hand. Basic due diligence wasn’t done before they threw someone under the bus. Her reputation had been all but destroyed by the end of Friday morning.”
Workplace silk Jeffrey Phillips SC said any case would likely be brought under a claim of negligence. “It could be negligent if there was something in Slater + Gordon systems which permitted this to happen, if there was some error or fault in their systems, which permitted a malign player to gain access to the emails of everybody in the firm,” he said.
“It might be on the basis there was some duty of care to make sure that the systems were such that this couldn’t be done. But I suppose they could say that if it was someone within the firm, then everybody has access.” He said a claim might also be brought under breach of contract. “Perhaps if there’s something about privacy, confidentiality in her contract of employment,” he said.
Asked whether Ms Ruiz-Matthyssen could claim the firm did not act quickly enough to defend her, Mr Phillips said “that’s a hard call for the firm to react that quickly”.
Ms Ruiz-Matthyssen, who has retained leading litigation firm BlackBay Lawyers, did not respond to requests for comment.
At least one legal firm says it has already been contacted by a number of Slater + Gordon employees since the breach, seeking advice about taking personal injury action against the firm.
AC Lawyers principal Andrew Christopoulos, said the “obvious” claim would be “mental harm occasioned by the employer’s conduct”. “Employers need to be increasingly vigilant, if not cautious, about what escapes because the impact of a privacy breach like that … is going to have an impact on mental health,” he said.
If you know more: rices@theaustralian.com.au
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