employee who is on her way out due to her dissatisfaction with her job (she’s the office manager). She’s always been responsible, relationship between her and ‘my friend’, who is the boss, has been solid. However, she has made it clear that she cannot continue to work with a couple of other employees due to a breakdown in Interpersonal relationships. There have been a number of angry interactions between her and two other employees. The two other employees are highly technically skilled and have far more value to the business than the office manager, and though it’s not clear ‘who started it’ the one that clearly needs to go is the office manager.

My ‘friend’ was planning on making a gradual transition during which they would discuss ‘moving on’ by laying off the Manager. But my ‘friend’ also was highly confident that he and the office manager could work together to train and transition the ‘intellectual assets’ that the manager possesses so that the transition would required less or minimal retraining and detecting the office managers skills, status, and just the general list of what she does, where she’s at, how and what to bill clients, and collection agreements and status.

I know this is long, sorry, but here’s where it gets messy. The ‘friend’ contacted a skilled employee ‘headhunter’ type firm on the internet, and told were looking for a new office manager to replace on that is still employed by their firm, and made it crystal clear that this whole thing needs to remain strictly confidential in order to buy time for the transition.

The employment agency proceeded to call the office, talk to the very person that caused us, I mean them, to require confidentiality. They asked the office manager to verify information and that the firm was looking for an office manager.

So now any sort of friendly or cooperative transition is blown, the employment agency has grossly violated the confidentiality requirement, and the transition will now be extremely difficult and will be costly for the firm.

So the question is, are there legal actions that could be taken against the employment agency for severely damaging this situation? I’m familiar with the concept of ‘consideration’ but even though monetary damages will undoubtedly happen, it’s difficult to identify direct costs. Is this a situation where there may punitive damages?

I appreciate any response or thoughts you attorneys may have. And look forward to the stupid comments from the rest of you that would be typical of my type of response to these kinds of questions. Can I just lol now for those ahead of time? Thanks.

lol.