After Death, Who's Got Mail?

BOSTON, MA — Federal law does not prohibit Yahoo from giving a dead man's family access to his email account, Massachusetts's highest court said. A lower court wrongly concluded that the Stored Communications Act barred Yahoo from giving Robert and Marianne Ajemian access to their brother John's email messages, the Supreme Judicial Court said Monday.

John died in a bicycle accident in Medfield in 2006. His siblings were appointed personal representatives of his estate.

Yahoo cited federal law as the reason it couldn't hand over the man's emails, but the Supreme Judicial Court said that the law "does not stand in the way of Yahoo doing so."

The Supreme Judicial Court tossed the lower court ruling and returned it for further consideration.

You can read an interesting 2013 take on this from the Digital Media Law Project.

(AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)