Employer responsibility to report illegal activities established by Court.

What would you do if you caught an employee accessing pornographic material using a club computer? According to the New Jersey Superior Court ruling in Doe v. XYC Corp., employers have a responsibility to report the employee's activities to proper authorities. In fact, the duty to report child pornography exists on the books in all 50 states through the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act passed in 1996.

In this case, the company became aware through its Internet monitoring system that the employee was accessing pornographic material from his work computer. The employee was reprimanded and told to cease his activities. Ultimately, the employee utilized his workstation computer to post pornographic photographs of his step-daughter on the Internet.

The Court ruled that it was simply not enough to reprimand the employee, and that the employer had a greater responsibility to report the illegal activities of its employee. If the employer had in fact intervened at that time, it would have prevented the further illegal activities of its employee.

Clubs should have specific policies in place regulating employee Internet access at work and expressly state in such policies that the employer has the right to monitor all Internet usage. In the event of misuse, either illegal or inappropriate, clubs should establish protocol for addressing the issue and be prepared to take immediate and decisive action.

For more information on this decision, please visit http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/courts/appellate/a2909-04.opn.html. For a sample employee Internet usage policy, please visit CMAA's Research Archives at http:// www.cmaa.org/ResearchArchives/ServiceSourceCriteria.asp.