A former employee at AshleyMadison.com, a dating website for married people looking to have an affair, is suing the company for $20 million.
According to Canada Star, Doriana Silva says in her claim that shortly after starting her job, she was given just three weeks to type up 1,000 ‘fake female profiles’ meant to lure in male customers, which in turn caused her to develop severe pain in her wrists.
The company apparently refused to grant her workers’ compensation for the injuries, and now she is seeking a share of the money earned through the profiles she created.
A spokesperson for AshleyMadison.com told MailOnline that Ms Silva’s allegations were ‘without merit’, and that recent pictures show her ‘enjoying herself on a jet ski – an unlikely activity for someone who has allegedly suffered serious injury’.
A spokesperson for AshleyMadison.com provided recent pictures of her ‘enjoying herself on a jet ski – an unlikely activity for someone who has allegedly suffered serious injury’.
‘Our service is 100 percent authentic, as described in our terms and conditions,’ he added. ‘And we resent any implication otherwise and are certain we will be both vindicated and victorious in court.’
Ms Silva, a Brazilian immigrant living in Toronto, was hired in March 2011 to help the website launch its Portuguese-language homepage.
She was asked to create 1,000 fake female profiles, and was led to believe ‘that doing so was some sort of a normal business practice in the industry,’ states her claim.
But if she had been made aware of the ‘ethical and legal issues arising in relation to online fraud’, Ms Silva says she would not have done the work, and she would not have sustained her injuries from ‘an enormous amount of keyboarding’.
After experiencing severe pain, her requests for a supportive device for her wrists went ignored.
Now, according to the court documents, she is ‘seriously disabled’ and has been unable to work since 2011.
Miss Silva is suing AshleyMadison for $20million for the company’s ‘unjust enrichment’ at her expense, plus an additional $1million for punitive and general damages.
The Globe and Mail reports that she is suing AshleyMadison for $20 million for the company’s ‘unjust enrichment’ at her expense, plus an additional $1million for punitive and general damages.
She is invoking a doctrine called waver of tort, which, according to her lawyer Paul Dollak, means that since she was hurt in the process of creating the profiles, AshleyMadison is ‘profiting from her injury basically.’
A terms and conditions section on the website states: ‘You acknowledge and agree that any profiles of users and members, as well as, communications from such persons may not be true, accurate or authentic and may be exaggerated or fantasy.
‘You acknowledge and understand that you may be communicating with such persons and that we are not responsible for such communications.’
In his email to MailOnline, the AshleyMadison spokesperson provided several photos of Ms Silva showing ‘no signs of her so called injury’, including one of her on a jet-ski and one of her throwing her arms in the air in front of a city skyline.
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