DeeLite wrote:
mimi wrote:
Reality Check wrote:
Hendershot lives in Alabama.
which law would apply? The state where you're calling from, or the law of the state you are calling to, or a federal law?

the state you are currently in (where the recordings are made).
This could be an extremely dangerous assumption to make. The issue is actually a highly fact-intensive choice of law question. In New York, for example, the choice of law is the state in which the
injury occurred. While I believe some states have, in the interests of judicial economy, established bright line rules based on the location of the taper and the non-consenting party, this is not the case everywhere.
Common choice of law concerns include the locus of the majority of the actions comprising the factual nucleus of the case, the locus of the effects, the state with the most policy interest in enforcing the law over the subject matter, and a number of other nonexclusive factors that essentially amount to choosing the law of the forum state with the most meaningful interest in adjudicating the issue. Resolution of choice of law issues can consume as many legal resources as entire trials of more simple cases.
Further, more than one state can have concurrent jurisdiction over actions undertaken and having effects in more than one state, so the issue may need to be resolved in more than one state. Even if one's own state has established a bright-line rule explicitly placing the choice of law, when the case is in its own courts, one cannot be certain that, if haled into court in another state that has not resolved the issue, that that state will not apply its own laws instead.
I would assume, unless the legal issue is cut-and-dried in every conceivable forum, that recording a telephone conversation without the consent of all parties is fraught with peril.
Edit: The perils of not reading to the end of the thread include not seeing someone post basically what you did. The perils of reading to the end of the thread include losing your place. I could zap this to remove redundant material, but it seems like it adds enough to the discussion to justify sparing its life.