18 Jul Prosecutor Suspended For Accidental “Reply All” Email

If you are active in business this has probably happened to you at least once. As soon as you hit “send” on an email you realize it went to more people than you intended. If you are lucky it’s innocent, if not then someone reads something you really wish they didn’t. In a sign of our interconnected times, this happened to a prosecutor involved in a major cheating scandal in the Atlanta schools, according to the ABA Journal. The case accuses senior school officials of rigging test results. Twenty-one people have already pled guilty to participating in the cheating or its coverup.

The Assistant District Attorney in Fulton County, GA was reacting to an email that a senior school official said she was too ill to appear in court due to cancer. Her two word response, meant only for her DA colleagues, “Surprise surprise.” Unfortunately this went to a whole bunch of people who received the email, including the official’s lawyers. Oops. Now the ADA has been suspended for 3 days and removed from the case. The ADA herself is actually a cancer survivor. She was apologetic, etc.

As careful as we all are, in the hundreds of emails I deal with every day the possibility of a simple messup like that is probably way too high. How many times have you received the “so-and-so would like to recall this email” messages? Is that worse than ignoring it? This also happens frequently with text messages, where people accidentally receive texts meant for others. So lawyers, business people and other humans, take that extra few seconds each time and make sure you know who you are writing to!