As a follow-up to a case previously described here, Ameet Sachdev of the Chicago Tribune reports that the same judge who awarded Kathy Lawlor $1.8 million when she sued her former employer, North American Corp. of Illinois for invasion of privacy found for the company in its separate lawsuit against her for anti-competitive conduct:
Judge Carol Pearce McCarthy ordered Lawlor to give back $78,781 in commissions she had earned, as well as to pay $551,467 in punitive damages.
Lawlor had been awarded $1.8 million after she produced evidence that her former employer had used a private investigator who engaged in pretexting to obtain her phone records as part of their surveillance of her because the company suspected that she was trying to steal customers. The company subsequently acknowledged that she had not stolen any customers.
According to a transcript of the Oct. 18 hearing, [Judge] McCarthy summed up the matter: “I don’t think anyone was naive. I don’t think anyone came into this courtroom with clean hands.”