"This case is about invasion of privacy and a violation of the law," said an attorney, who represents two former Lake Worth police officers, Ralph Brillinger and Richard Sluman, and Lori Nedzweckas, a police dispatcher now married to Brillinger.

According to the lawyer, callers to the police emergency line were advised their calls were recorded, as state law requires. But no notification was given on other lines, meaning that thousands of residents' conversations were taped illegally, he said. According to testimony in the case, about 150 calls were made to and from the police communications center during an eight-hour shift.

A hearing on a plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment - which asks Judge Kenneth Stern to decide the case in their favor is scheduled for mid-January in Palm Beach County circuit court.

Ultimately, the case stems in part from a personnel squabble that has roiled the Police Department and led to three years of litigation.

"This lawsuit (is a result of) a dispute between employee and employer," said a lawyer working on the case. "It should not be viewed as a fight over the constitutional right to privacy."

In September 2003, Circuit Judge William Berger in certified the suit as a class action to include more than 130 city employees who worked in or had access to the communications center and may have been recorded without their knowledge.

In his order, Berger noted that for more than two years callers to three of the four phone lines into the Police Department were not told that the calls were recorded. The city "only started notifying these callers that their calls were being intercepted and recorded on or about July 26, 2002 ... approximately four days after plaintiffs filed their complaint," he said.