Coulter

Christopher Coulter was an amateur sleuth. By hiding two small tape recorders in his pockets, he boasts, he covertly recorded over 160 private conversations with his supervisors and coworkers at Bank of America, where he was employed. In this case, his sleuthing has cost him $132,000, the damages awarded the bank and 11 of its employees under the Privacy Act (Pen. Code, § 630 et seq.), which prohibits recording confidential communications without the consent of all parties, when their motions for summary adjudication were granted. Coulter appeals contending there was a material issue of fact as to whether the conversations he recorded were confidential. He contends they were not because he never intended them to be, he made the tapes for his own use and did not disseminate them to third persons and the substance of some of the conversations was related to bank management personnel. We affirm.

Coulter was employed by Bank of America as an automatic teller machine technician. He began to experience largely unexplained problems with various supervisors and coworkers at the bank in 1989. In apparent anticipation of litigation he would later file, claiming sexual harassment…