Secretly Recording A Spouse Has A Price: $120,000.00
An article from Ars Technica discusses a woman who secretly put a recording device in a teddy bear to prove allegations that her estranged spouse was mistreating their daughter. Not only did the family law court rule that the recordings were inadmissible, but the husband (“Duke”) sued the wife (“Dianna”) in federal court for, among other things, violation of the federal Wiretap Act. From the article:
When Duke filed the federal lawsuit against Dianna in 2009, he also rounded up five other plaintiffs whose conversations had been recorded by the bear. One plaintiff, a cousin of Duke’s, at one point had the bear in his van for several days after it was left there accidentally; the cousin, going through his own divorce at the time, was upset that his conversations had been recorded and eventually distributed to people involved with Duke and Dianna’s custody case.
