Oops!

MANHATTAN (CN) - Goldman Sachs sued Google to try to retrieve an email with "highly confidential client information" that a Goldman Sachs consultant mistakenly sent to a Gmail account, rather than to an internal Goldman Sachs account.

Goldman Sachs sued Google on Friday in New York County Supreme Court. It seeks replevin of the email, declaratory judgment and an injunction.

As a registered member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Goldman Sachs has to file reports on its clients' investments. "One step in the process of preparing one of the FINRA reports is for Goldman Sachs's technology and operations areas to send data that will be used to prepare the report, including certain client information, to its compliance department for validation," the complaint states. "Goldman Sachs hired an outside technology consulting firm to assist with this process.

"On June 23, 2014, an employee of the consulting firm was testing changes to Goldman Sachs's internal reporting and validation process. The employee intended to send a copy of the internal report to the email address provided to her by Goldman Sachs, which is in the form '[first name].[last name]@gs.com,' but instead mistakenly sent a copy of the internal report to an address in the form '[first name].[last name]@gmail.com.' She is not the owner of the gmail address."

Goldman Sachs says that email contained confidential client information. It claims that it sent another email to the gmail address, asking the recipient to delete the previous message, and confirm that she has done so.

Alas! Goldman says: "There has been no response."

Goldman says a member of Google's "Incident Response Team" told it on June 26 that the errant email could not be deleted without a court order.

"Absent an immediate injunction to ensure that the mistakenly sent email is not accessed in any way, Goldman Sachs's clients face the risk of an invasion of privacy and disclosure of sensitive, confidential information about themselves and their accounts," Goldman says in the lawsuit. "Further, Goldman Sachs faces the risk of unnecessary reputational harm if it cannot reassure its clients that their privacy is being properly safeguarded."

It seeks a court order directing Google to help it get that email back.

Goldman Sachs is represented by Hillary Richard, with Brune & Richard.

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