Public interest and workplace boundaries collide in BC CRT ruling
A recent decision from the British Columbia Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) has put a spotlight on the intersection of employee privacy, workplace conduct, and the obligations of employers when faced with sensitive accusations. In MR v. SS, 2025 BCCRT 851, the tribunal dismissed a claim for damages after intimate images taken at work were shared with an employer by a former romantic partner.
The ruling, while limited in precedential value, prompts important questions for HR professionals about how to handle similar situations and where the line is drawn between privacy and the public interest.
The applicant, MR, sought $5,000 in damages under the Intimate Images Protection Act (IIPA), alleging that her former partner, SS, had threatened to share and did share intimate images of her without consent. As detailed in the decision, the images, depicted MR in various states of undress and engaging in sexual acts. They were taken during work hours and on her employer’s premises. After the relationship ended, SS sent the images to MR’s employer, claiming it was to alert them to “workplace misconduct.”
The tribunal found that while most of the images met the statutory definition of “intimate images,” the applicant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in those images as they were taken at work, sometimes in areas accessible to others, stating: "I find a person who takes otherwise intimate recordings of themselves at work does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in those images to the extent they are shared with their employer for the purpose of investigating alleged misconduct, whatever the sharer’s motives.”
The tribunal also accepted the respondent’s argument that sharing the images with the employer was in the public interest, noting that the images were taken “at work, on the employer’s property, during business hours”.
As a result, the claim for damages was dismissed and a publication ban was imposed to protect the identities of both parties.
While the decision is striking, Andrea Raso, employment lawyer at Clark Wilson in Vancouver, urges HR professionals to be cautious about reading too much into the ruling’s precedential value.
“In terms of precedential value, in terms of our superior court or our Supreme Court, following that decision is not likely to happen," she says.
"They're going to just make their decision. So we kind of start with that caveat."
Raso notes that the CRT is designed for disputes involving small monetary amounts and often involves self-represented parties, which can affect the depth of legal arguments presented.
“The civil resolution tribunal, it's for cases that are of very little monetary value, and so oftentimes the parties are not represented, and that often means that they don't put to the judge the case law that they're relying on," Raso explains.
"So how has public interest been interpreted in the past, not only in this legislation, but in other pieces of legislation, to kind of guide the judge. We also didn't have that. So it is very possible that in another court, under different circumstances, a judge can come to a different interpretation.”
The CRT’s decision turned on the concept of “public interest,” interpreting its meaning to include an employer’s right to know about potential misconduct.
“I agreed that the applicant had a reasonable expectation her partner would not share the images with the public generally, such as by posting them on social media or adult content sites, or with friends or family," the decision read.
"However, I found that expectation did not extend to the applicant’s employer.”
According to Raso, the decision may have been affected by the particular facts of this case, "Because there was this 'bad fact' scenario, I guess the judge decided to stretch the definition of public interest to say that the employer was a member of the public and had an interest in knowing this."
Raso cautions that the outcome might have been different if the images had been taken in a private setting or outside of work.
“It may make somebody think twice," she says.
"If you're in your own private setting, that's different. But because I think most people would kind of be shocked by the fact that this person would do this at their workplace, I think that's what created the bad decision.”
For HR professionals, the ruling underscores the need for a nuanced, case-by-case approach when receiving sensitive information about employees, Raso explains.
“If the accusations that are coming to the employer have nothing to do with the employees work ... that's really not something that the employer should get into," she says.
"But if somebody were to say, 'My ex wife is stealing money from the company', now that the employer has that information, they can act on it, but they still have to do all of the things they would otherwise do, no matter how the information came to them, which would be to conduct a full investigation. So if it is something that definitely impacts the employer or the work or the work environment, once the employer has that information, they have a duty to act.”
However, she warns against acting on information that is purely personal or irrelevant to the workplace.
“If some rogue ex just decided to send a bunch of news to somebody's employer, you know, or some other private, personal stuff that really is not the employer's business, then the employer would just have to ignore it," Raso says.
"It would have to be taken on a case by case basis and what the potential impact of that employee's actions were on the workplace.”
The CRT’s decision also raises questions about what employers should do with sensitive information once it is received.
“Was the employer sent a copy of these pictures? There are privacy rights that employees have, and so if the employer looks at them, sends them to other people to decide their opinion, they might be offside, because they really shouldn't have this private information,” Raso says.
"So it's a challenge to the employer. Particularly, what do you do in a case like this? Because, you don't want to encourage other people out there to come and snitch on their exes or other people that they may have a vendetta with, providing information that was otherwise personal and private information.”
For Raso, the CRT’s ruling in MR v. SS emphasizes that context is everything; while on its face the decision implies that any conduct within a workplace setting is considered public, she stresses that every workplace is different and therefore should be treated as such by employers.
“Because she did it in the workplace, the employer would have an argument that she waived any privacy rights that she had," says Raso, but adds that particulars may affect that assumption.
"Was it in a locked room? If it was, she would have a greater expectation of privacy than if she did it in her office where somebody could have come by, or the door half ajar, then she wouldn't have had an expectation of privacy. Those are issues that an employer would have to grapple with.”
