Notice: You Can Now Sue Over Your Own Stupidity

Oh, crap — I think I mailed a photocopy of my ass to the wrong person. I meant to send it to TechCrunch, you see, but I wrote the wrong address on the envelope. No big deal, though. I’ll just sue the post office until it tells me who ended up getting my greeting.

Sound like some screwed up logic? It is. But it’s also the same basic principle being used by a Wyoming bank in the midst of a lawsuit against Google.

Howdy! We’re Your Bank. We Like Horses.

Here’s the scoop, as reported by Wired: Someone at the bank — a fine institution by the name of Rocky Mountain, which proudly displays cowboys and horses on its home page — recently fired off an e-mail containing a customer’s “sensitive data.” Mr. or Mrs. Banking Professional, however, sent the e-mail to the wrong address. Oh, and he or she also somehow managed to accidentally attach a document with the names, contact info, and financial details of 1300 other bank customers.

So, all those goodies went to some random Gmail account, purely as a result of our Employee of the Month’s mistake. Now, the good ol’ boys at Rocky Mountain are suing Google. User privacy be damned, they’re demanding the G-team turn over the name and contact info of the person who erroneously received the e-mail so they can go get the records back from them. Or, in simpler terms, Rocky Mountain Bank is suing Google over its own stupidity.

You Mean Y’all Wanted to Know About That?

Here’s where things get worse: The bank actually fought to keep its customers — you know, the ones whose identities were compromised — from finding out about all of this. It filed to keep the entire case sealed, Wired reports, to avoid “creating panic” within its customer base and causing them to flood the bank with a “surge of inquiries.”

(Because, you know, Rocky Mountain’s employees don’t have time to deal with that kind of nonsense. They’re too busy sending out confidential customer info to random e-mail addresses.)

Congratulations to You…

We here at eSarcasm felt Rocky Mountain Bank’s asinine actions needed to be recognized. We decided, then, to break out our dubious and often disregarded distinction for the worst abusers of technology: the eSarcasm Salute. It’s an honor we don’t bestow lightly, mainly because those plaques are really freakin’ heavy. But Rocky Mountain’s ludicrous lawsuit deserves it (and we’ve been working out big time), so we’re sacking up and stepping up to the plate.

Rocky Mountain Bank, congratulations. We’ll be mailing a custom-tailored plaque to your corporate offices, along with a special sumthin’-sumthin’ from our copy machine. Of course, we’ll probably get your address wrong — and, like most people who haven’t had too many spur kicks to the head, we don’t file lawsuits over that sort of thing — so you may not want to hold your breath on ever actually receiving it.

Related Stories:

• We’re Suing Apple, Michael Arrington, and 8 Others
• Notice: You Are Hereby Being Sued By Facebook
• More Shocking Revelations in Viacom vs. Google
• The Techlist 29.Sept.09
• Five More Ways to Avoid Getting Sued on Twitter