YAKIMA, Wash. (Legal Newsline) - A woman who traded in her cell phone at a Washington State T-Mobile store only to later find sexually explicit videos and photos sent through her Snapchat can move forward with much of her lawsuit.
A Jane Doe sued T-Mobile and Wireless Vision last year after a 2022 incident that she says is the result of T-Mobile's long-standing practice of turning a blind eye to its employees' conduct. She alleges the anxiety of not knowing where her personal photos and videos are, and whether they may be posted for all the world to see, has given her post-traumatic stress disorder.
Her lawsuit makes 12 claims, and a recent order from Yakima federal judge Stanley Bastian dismissed only her claim under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act and her request for punitive damages.
Surviving, among others, was her claim under the Reauthorization of Violence Against Women Act, despite the defendants' argument it can't be premised on being accused of vicarious liability for the actions of an employee.
"The general rule in the Ninth Circuit is that where the statute itself is silent as to vicarious liability, courts should conclude that Congress intended to incorporate 'ordinary tort-related vicarious liability rules,'" Bastian wrote.
Jane Doe was upgrading to a new phone and needed to enter her password several times to have her information transferred to a new iPhone. De'aundre Gomez put a sticker on the old iPhone when the transfer was complete and placed the phone in a bubble wrap envelope. Doe believed her old phone would be wiped of all data.
But later that day, she discovered someone had accessed her Snapchat account to disseminate nude photos of her and a video of her having sex. They had been stored in her old phone's camera roll.
It also had banking information and a copy of her social security card. She contacted the Kennewick Police Department and returned to the store.
The store manager found the old phone in a storage room with the sticker removed. They gave the phone back to Jane Doe but took away the trade-in credit, forcing her mother to pay full price for the new phone.
Doe discovered cameras in the back room did not work "and the police officers responding to the incident noted that the next day, the manager's office smelled strongly of cannabis," Bastian wrote.
The defendants will face claims for negligence, intrusion upon solitude or seclusion, outrage, negligent misrepresentation, negligent hiring and retention, unauthorized disclosure of intimate images, sexual harassment, violation of the state Consumer Protection Act, trespass to chattels and conversion.