What steps can companies that monitor employees’ e-mail take to protect themselves against invasion of privacy lawsuits?

Bonita Bourke and Rhonda Hall worked as customer service representatives for Nissan Motor Corporation, where they helped managers and employees at dealerships resolve problems with a new computer system that the company had implemented to help run dealerships more efficiently. During a training session on the system, one of Bonita Bourke’s coworkers, Lori Eaton, was demonstrating how dealerships could use the system’s e-mail feature as a management tool. As part of the demonstration, she randomly selected an e-mail that Bourke had sent to an employee at a Nissan dealership. Unfortunately, the e-mail was a personal one rather than one with a business purpose and contained sexual comments.