What can be done about employees accessing porn in the workplace?

“The courts are going to have a lot more sympathy for a 20-year employee who’s messed up once, they’ve got a clean record otherwise, than someone who’s only been there for a few months and they’ve had a couple of warnings and maybe have some other issues,” said Jim Anstey, lawyer at Nelligan O’Brien Payne in Ottawa.

But in another case, an employee was awarded damages after his employer caught him storing pornographic images on a company computer but this was complicated due to the way in which his dismissal was handled.

The court dismissed the company’s claim and awarded the employee $14,583.33 in damages for wrongful dismissal and forgave a loan.

In this case, Tagg Industries v. Rieder, the company hired an employee, provided him with a $40,000 loan that would have been forgiven months later, in lieu of a $40,000 bonus.

On Dec. 4, 2015, the employee was fired. Tagg alleged that it dismissed Rieder for cause as a result of him deleting proprietary information from and storing pornography on a company laptop and misrepresenting his previous work title, responsibilities and salary in addition to not performing his work satisfactorily.