STAA Protected Activity - Refusing to Drive Due to Hazardous Weather

"Even if they don't respond, in court one can trace the IP headers to see if delivery was successful."

That's wrong.

 

Prove it. If an email is rejected by the server, you will receive an error message stating delivery was unsuccessful. Emails don't just get 'lost in the mail.' But go ahead and prove your assertions, I'm waiting

 

I am probably going to go get wasted do to the psychological trauma of this thread.

My attorney will be in touch.

 

As your attorney, I advise you to take a hit out of the little brown bottle in my shaving kit. You won't need much, just a tiny taste.

 

I've enjoyed reading some of truckers justice posts that does from some actual cases, including the decisions.

Very, very informative.

 

No Ridgeline is correct. The most that can be proven is the mail server did not reject it outright. The mail server could have accepted it, then discard the email for any number of reasons. Viruses, no valid user, spf rejection, etc.
Heck I have my email server (yes I run my own domain and my own email server) that silently drops whole contries, along with know spam friendly ISP's

 

Prove what?

You are assuming things without an understanding the complexity of the systems used for emails. It isn't that simple as you state, and you were not talking about rejecting an email when you made the statement, you were talking about proving the recipient received it, which are two different things.

In the rules of evidence, you can't assume that someone got something without some sort of proof, the ip header can be used for some things but I can tell you right now that can not be traced nor given a clear indication of if it hit the company and what happened to it.

Yes they can disappear into the ether, it happens all the time.

As ZVar pointed out, there are a number of reasons why they go poof!

 

I'm saying that an IT expert can analyze everything and prove if delivery occurred or failed. It takes an expert witness, costs probably $40k to hire that expert, but nothing is ambiguous when it comes to computer science. They either received the emails and pretended to not receive it, or the server rejects it. I do understand a bit about how data flows through the TCP/IP stack.

But look, this is what it would probably come down to. Your boss is going to respond to all of your emails, usually. You'll have a documented history of this. At that point, you engage in a protected act and now suddenly the employer's story is, "we never received those emails." How is it then, that you received all of these other emails, yet selectively did not receive the crucial emails which prove the case? Nobody believes it. Doesn't pass the gut test. They either knew, or should have known.

IP headers can also be spoofed, so it's going to require a more intense analysis than what I'm capable of producing here...don't get me wrong, I'm no computer scientist. but when it comes down to it, litigation costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. It might take several thousands of dollars in an investigation, but eventually--there would be no speculation on , did the email get delivered, or did it not get delivered. There's no ambiguity when an expert is hired to analyze the entire thing, and then to testify at $40k per court hearing.

That being said, a simple subpoena of the company's server and emails would likely reveal, they did in fact receive the email, they deleted it, and tried to create the appearance that they had no knowledge of it.

I think what I'm trying to say is that an IT expert could analyze the situation and form conclusive findings , regardless of what the employer would want to say.

 

Thanks for your insight. What you are saying; the mail server accepted it, discarded the email, etc. This is where burden shifting comes into play. If you email your employer complaining of unsafe conditions, you have on your end, a time stamp and proof you made the complaint. This establishes the prima facie case that you engaged in a protected activity. The employer would have the burden of proof to objectively show, the spam filter got it, it was rejected somehow. That is probably a long, hard, expensive burden to prove. It requires an intrusive analysis of their entire IT system to conclude one way or another. At that juncture, I'm sure it would be discovered that the employer actually deleted the email complaint, which is itself illegal. It's a misdemeanor in my jurisdiction to destroy documents after an employer is on notice of pending litigation. A safety complaint that is clear and concise, probably places liability on the employer to not delete anything.

Even if they were to go to court and say look, we never received it, our spam filter probably got it. The court would demand objective proof of this--otherwise it's just speculation, and an employer always has a motive to escape liability from their problems. One thing a brilliant attorney friend of mine once told me--"a trial isn't about truth, but what's presented." Even if the employer says we never got the email, unless they can prove this with their own IT expert, and shift the burden back to the plaintiff--they're brown bread, as the English say. The plaintiff would have an email with a timestamp, and the employer would have their verbal word saying, "maybe the spam filter got that one specific email out of all the emails we've exchanged over the months." Boom, paying that judgement!

 

Look, you keep moving the goal posts.

Your statement was wrong, it is still wrong and I addressed it.

You seem to want to make it right but it can't be.