Imagine that you're going about your business one day and your friend accidentally calls you. You answer, but you're friend doesn't say anything. So for the next couple minutes you curiously listen in hopes of catching what you're friend is doing on the other line. This was sort of what Howard Stern was sued for Monday.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a Massachusetts woman named Judith Barrigas called the IRS's service center to discuss the previous year's liabilities which were placed on her tax refund. The service dispatched her call to IRS agent, Jimmy Forsythe, who at the time was oddly on hold with The Howard Stern Show. For the next 45 minutes, Forsythe talked with Barrigas about her tax problem and during the course of their conversation, someone on the other line caught wind of it and deemed it interesting enough to put on the airwaves.
Barrigas found out her personal business was being broadcast from a number of texts and phone calls she received from different people telling her she was on the air.
Barrigas now is suing Stern and his radio show for negligence and invasion of privacy. At the same time, she is suing the agency under the Federal Tort Claim Act and unlawful disclosure of her tax return.
Forsythe has since been given administrative leave, according to the lawsuit and Stern still has not commented on the matter.