Tim Hull reports:
A son who used his iPhone to record a kitchen-table conversation about his dying mother’s will did not violate the federal Wiretap Act, the 2nd Circuit ruled, because he had no criminal intent.
The federal appeals court in Manhattan joined its sister circuits in finding that the Act’s “exception to the one-party consent provision requires that a communication be intercepted for the purpose of a tortious or criminal act that is independent of the intentional act of recording.”
Just days before she died of lung cancer in 2008, Elizabeth Caro and her husband, Marshall, got into a “heated” conversation with family members about her will.
Without telling anyone, Elizabeth’s son, David Weintraub, used his iPhone to capture the conversation and, after Elizabeth died without a will, used the recording to challenge Marshall Caro’s claim on her estate.
Read more on Courthouse News.
Related: Caro v. Weintraub (opinion, pdf)