Noel

I. BACKGROUND2

Before all the lawsuits and enmity began, Sandra Hall lived and worked at the Vancouver Riding Academy, a business that Eric Noel owned and operated. In 1995 and 1996, Noel and Hall entered into two inauspicious agreements. First, in May 1995, they agreed to jointly purchase a horse named “Red Hot Prospect” for $750, train it and ready it for resale, and share equally in any profits earned. Second, around August 1996, Hall sold Noel her mobile home which was parked on the premises of the Academy. The sale price of $5000 was to be paid in full when Red was sold.

By August 1996, Hall and Noel’s relationship had turned sour, and it continued to deteriorate as the two fought over the management of the horse and the ownership of the home. Then in May 1997, Hall and her husband, Brian Hall, went to the mobile home, where Noel now lived, and found a number of cassette tapes on a table and in a stereo that belonged to Hall. She played one of them and realized that the tapes con- tained recordings of her telephone conversations while she lived at the Academy. (Id.) She took the tapes and called her friend, Gabrielle Lennartz, whose conversation had also been…