Woman seeks court action over being filmed sleeping at work

 A former employee has applied to take St Paul’s Hospital to court for intruding on her privacy, after she was filmed sleeping at her workplace.

Chan Hui May-kiu has already complained, without success, to the privacy commissioner and appeals board.

According to court papers, Chan’s supervisor, Lam Pik-yee, told a subordinate to film Chan, using a mobile phone, while she slept during a shift in July 2010. Lam later said she wanted the video as evidence of Chan’s misconduct at work.

Chan, who is described as a member of the “supportive service staff”, did not realise she had been filmed until her supervisor confronted her with the video clip during an appraisal meeting in September.

Told that month that she was going to be fired, she resigned instead, the papers show.

Night shift workers are allowed to take naps at work, but Chan was not told the date and time of the filming, so was unable to defend herself, she noted.

In April last year Chan took her complaint to the Office of Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, which held a preliminary inquiry and concluded that the filming had been lawful and fair.

The commission agreed that the video was taken to prevent Chan from denying she had been sleeping, and did not violate the privacy laws. Chan then appealed to the Administrative Appeals Board in January this year, without success.

She is now asking for the High Court’s permission to lodge a judicial review, seeking to have the board’s decision quashed. She wants the court to declare that Lam breached privacy laws and was wrong to have showed the video to other nurses, she said.