Federal Suit Questions Worker Privacy Rights : Courts: Case will weigh what protections employees are entitled to, as well as how far employers can go in monitoring staff.

It was a short-lived, middle-distance love affair.

They worked at McDonald’s restaurants in towns 60 miles apart. So, to fill the void between their amorous get-togethers, Michael Huffcut and Rose Hasset left messages for each other on their voice mail at work.

Then, everything came unstuck. Their boss allegedly monitored the lovey-dovey whisperings, recorded them and played them back to Huffcut’s wife, Lisa. Huffcut was soon fired.

The two-month liaison is long over and the Huffcuts are back together, but a legal question is left hanging: How private is the American workplace?

In a federal lawsuit, Huffcut is seeking $1 million in damages from McDonald’s Corp.; Harry Harvey III, a fellow McDonald’s supervisor who was a family friend, and longtime employer Fred Remillard, who operates 12 McDonald’s franchises in western New York. Lisa Huffcut is suing for the same amount.

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The couple contend Remillard violated privacy rights guaranteed them by federal law and intentionally inflicted emotional anguish, embarrassment and loss of reputation and income. The case could become the nation’s first to test whether conversations recorded in electronic voice-mail boxes are granted the same confidentiality protections as live telephone calls or postal mail.

It also delves into the ill-charted terrain of how far an employer can go in eavesdropping at work for “quality assurance” or other business reasons.

The American Civil Liberties Union argues that covert electronic monitoring generally should be avoided. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce counters that employers should not be legally restrained in trying to ensure that their telephones, computers and other property are used strictly for business.

“When people speak privately, they must be free of uninvited scrutiny and detection,” said the couple’s lawyer, Raymond M. Schlather. “We’ve got to build a wall around that kind of private communication.”

Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of Privacy Journal, a monthly newsletter based in Providence, R.I., said “employers certainly have the right to listen in on business-related conversations. They probably don’t . . . have the right to listen further when it’s clearly private and personal.”

The defendants have until Monday to reply to the lawsuit. If a trial is ordered, it would probably not begin for another six to 12 months.

“Our answer will speak for itself,” said Edward C. Hooks, a lawyer for Remillard. “We’re still in the process of reviewing and analyzing.”

McDonald’s executives declined to comment.

Huffcut, now 41, joined McDonald’s out of high school, starting at the counter and working his way up to regional supervisor in Elmira. Hasset was one notch below store manager in a McDonald’s in Binghamton when their dalliance turned serious in the fall of 1993.

The lawsuit alleges that Harvey, another of Remillard’s area supervisors, intercepted the lovers’ intimate messages and transmitted them to Remillard’s voice mail. Huffcut says he had been told his voice mail was private.

It claims Harvey, at his boss’ direction, played a tape of the messages for Lisa Huffcut in December, 1993. When Huffcut found out, he confronted Remillard about the propriety of his action and was fired. Later, Hasset was promoted to store manager.

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Why Lisa Huffcut was told of the affair “is one of the dark mysteries of all this,” Schlather said. “From our perspective, it was totally unnecessary.”

With counseling, the couple’s relationship is now “stronger than ever,” he said. The Huffcuts, who were married 14 years ago and have two children, did not respond to a telephone message seeking comment.

Milind Shah, a spokesman for the ACLU’s National Task Force on Civil Liberties in the Workplace, said the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act prohibits employers from using “information gathered from private calls for business reasons, for employment purposes.”

That law, which updated the Federal Wiretapping Statute, protects electronic communications and electronic storage of information. Schlather argues that this covers voice mail, although it was not specified.

The ACLU believes employees “should be told how they’re going to be monitored, when they’re going to be monitored and how that information will be used,” Shah said.

“You’d be amazed at how many different ways your privacy can be violated when you walk into the workplace--video cameras, sound bugging, keyboard and e-mail monitoring. According to the law, you effectively check your privacy rights at the door.”

Peter J. Eide, manager of human resources for law and policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Fourth Amendment privacy rights do not apply in the private-sector workplace.

Employers ought to give new employees notice that phones must be monitored. “But that is as far as we can go,” Eide said.

“The employer paid for the phone, paid for the computer, paid for the voice mail. It seems reasonable to say that the employers, since they own the . . . stuff, ought to be able to regulate its use and monitor its use.

“And if the employee is bothered by that, then the employee can buy their own equipment! It’s a property rights issue.”