Employment & Labor Insider

Monday is Social Media Day, and our wonderful Marketing team has asked me to do a blog post in honor of the occasion. In 2024, I had a list of tips about social media for employees and employers. It was pretty good, if I do say so myself, so here’s a link in case you missed it, or in case you just want to re-read and savor its awesomeness.

For 2025, I have a social media cautionary tale for employers, and it is a doozy.

THE CEO WHO COULDN'T SHUT UP

A true story

Chapter One: The plot thickens

In 2022, a company’s Chief Technical Officer started making internal complaints about alleged sex discrimination and retaliation at his place of employment and advocating for some female executives who were allegedly not being treated equitably.

I will assume solely for the sake of argument that this CTO’s internal complaints lacked merit and that he was a high-maintenance troublemaker and a pain in the neck.

Right before Christmas 2022, the employer fired the CTO, and one week later -- on New Year's Eve -- sued him for all kinds of professional misconduct. Among many other things, the lawsuit alleged that the CTO sent sexually harassing emails and messages to nine women on the company system and during work hours. Although the lawsuit didn't specifically say it, you definitely got the impression that these women were co-workers.

Our story will focus on the “sex” part because I want you to keep reading.

It does appear that there may have been some very explicit messages exchanged between the CTO and some women. But, apparently, none of the women were employees of the company. Furthermore, it appears that the women were eager participants for whom the CTO's texts were not unwelcome. In other words, the CTO was doing private, consensual sexting with non-employees and wasn’t “harassing” anybody in the workplace.

The company was like, Well, he shouldn’t have been doing that on the company system while he was at work. However, my guess is that as a CTO he had to be available for work 24/7, and arguably couldn’t easily save his sexting for non-working hours because he didn’t have any non-working hours.

And no, sexting on the company system wasn’t cool and may have been a violation of the company’s policies. As the employer pointed out in the lawsuit, a CTO -- of all people -- ought to know better. But the CTO claims that the sexts were not sent using the company system. He said that they were sent from his personal iCloud account and “captured” by the employer’s system because he did some work-related texting from his personal account. (Dear IT readers, please tell us whether this is possible. I have no idea.)

Chapter 2: Better late than never

The company filed an Amended Complaint not long after filing its original lawsuit, but it continued to allege that the CTO was a sexual harasser. But then, approximately five months after the original lawsuit was filed, the company filed a Second Amended Complaint that no longer contained the sexual harassment allegations.  

Could the CTO sue the company for defamation? Fortunately for the company, allegations made in a lawsuit are generally subject to an “absolute privilege,” meaning that one cannot easily (if at all) assert a defamation claim based on allegations made in a lawsuit.

Whew. That’s a relief.

Chapter 3: You’ll never guess what happened next!

Approximately five months after the Second Amended Complaint was filed, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer went on social media (Medium, an online posting platform) and posted an article that said the CTO was “inappropriate with women,” “abused his position as CTO,” and was “a racist and misogynist.” The CEO’s post linked to the original Complaint, which contained the sexual “harassment” allegations, instead of the Second Amended Complaint, which did not.

Maybe it's just me, but I can't help feeling that this CEO might not have checked with his lawyers before he posted.

The CEO is apparently a very, very popular guy on social media. According to a court decision in the case, he had 12,000 followers on Medium, and his post about the CTO was shared with 10,000 of his followers on X. And he “continued to retweet posts containing links to the Medium article.”

But wait! There’s more!

According to the court, the CEO “further circulated the article to all [of the company]’s employees and customers, which [the CTO] alleges comprises nearly all of his potential employers.”

Not bad enough for ya? Read on!

The company’s “sales team was also directed to circulate the article,” and it was republished on the TechCrunch website.

The Medium post (which has been "updated" since it was originally published in 2023) is still available online, as are at least some of the retweets. I’m not going to link to them, but it is all very easy to find via Google or the search engine of your choice, and/or by doing a search of the CEO’s name on X.

Chapter 4: You probably will guess what happened next.

The CTO filed a counterclaim against the company and the CEO individually for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false light, and a lot of other things, all related to the CEO’s statements in his legally-unprotected Medium post. The judge dismissed one counterclaim, but she is allowing the rest – including the counterclaim for defamation – to proceed.

And this week, the judge issued another decision that wasn't great for the company. They won't be able to require the CTO to produce all of his "sexist" communications because they weren't aware of them at the time they terminated him.

The Moral: So what does this have to do with Social Media Day?

We (I, anyway) tend to focus on all the dumb things that employees do on social media – bash their employers, get into political arguments with co-workers that can make the workplace miserable when they all have to face each other in person again, discuss their medical conditions and other confidential personal information, post themselves drunk driving, post what they were really doing on that day when they called in sick, harass and threaten people . . .. I could go on and on.

But as this true story illustrates, it’s not just employees who are dumb on social media – employers are also capable of being dumb. I have no idea whether this company’s lawsuit against its CTO has any merit. It might. And maybe the CTO will eventually lose on all of his counterclaims. But I know for sure that, by not being able to keep his (figurative) mouth shut on social media, this CEO has brought upon himself and his company a dump of legal claims that they should never have had to face or defend.

So, employers, in honor of Social Media Day: SHUT UP!

THE END