Teen's Facebook post costs dad his $80000 settlement with former employer

A Florida teenager's ill-advised Facebook post has cost her father the $80,000 he had won in a legal settlement.

Dana Snay boasted on her Facebook page a few days after her father, Patrick Snay, reached the settlement in his age discrimination suit against his former employer, the Miami Herald reported.

'Mama and Papa Snay won the case against Gulliver,' Snay wrote to her 1,200 Facebook friends. 'Gulliver is now officially paying for my vacation to Europe this summer. SUCK IT.'

'Gulliver' is Gulliver Preparatory School, the Miami-area academy where Patrick Snay was headmaster until officials decided in 2010 not to renew his contract.

Snay, now 69, claimed Gulliver was discriminating against him and that Dana, then a student there, was suffering retaliation, the Daily Mail said.

The parties settled in November 2011. The school agreed to pay Snay $80,000, plus $60,000 in legal fees and $10,000 in back pay. The settlement, the Herald said, included a confidentiality agreement that required Snay and his wife to keep the deal's terms private and not tell anyone of its existence.

Snay, however, told Dana immediately, saying he had settled and was pleased. He said in a later deposition that he felt he needed to tell her because she knew the case was in mediation and she had suffered 'psychological scars' from her student days at Gulliver.

Dana Snay, in turn, took to Facebook. The post was seen by current Gulliver students and alumni. The school's lawyers got wind of it. Four days after they settlement was reached they told Patrick Snay the deal was off.

When Snay won a ruling to enforce the settlement, Gulliver appealed. In a ruling Wednesday, Judge Linda Ann Wells of Florida's Third District Court of Appeal overturned the lower court.

'Snay violated the agreement by doing exactly what he had promised not to do,' the judge wrote. 'His daughter then did precisely what the confidentiality agreement was designed to prevent.'

Confidentially agreements are an important part of most settlement agreements, noted Elie Mystal, writing in Above the Law Redline. Mystal explained:

'We can't tell from a settlement agreement that Snay 'won' his case against Gulliver. We don't know that Gulliver discriminated against him. All we know is that at some point it was worth $80,000 to Gulliver to make Snay's lawsuit go away, and that Snay wanted $80,000 and then to move on with his life. Dana Snay's characterization that 'Mama and Papa Snay won the case' is exactly the kind of simplistic viewpoint that confidentiality agreements are designed to avoid.'

While her father lost out on the money, for now, Dana Snay didn't lose out on a vacation -- according to the Herald, the part of her post about the European vacation was a joke.

Patrick Snay can move for a rehearing or appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.

The chances of him getting the money back aren't good, attorney Bradley Shear told Yahoo! Shine.

'Some confidentiality agreements stipulate that the client cannot tell people who are not involved in the case: others prohibit anyone from knowing,' Shear said. 'Facebook is a public forum, even if her profile is set to private, and that's where the mistake was made.'

Here's Newsy's take on the story:

Do you think a minor's post on social media about a parent's confidential legal settlement should be grounds to scuttle the agreement? Please leave a comment below.