Recent Developments from Around the States

The Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division has held that when an employer has actual or implied knowledge that an employee is using his/her work computer to view pornography, and possibly child pornography, that employer has a duty to investigate and interfere with these activities such that they do not result in harm to third parties. Doe v. XYC Corporation, 2005 WL 3527015 (Dec. 27).

Plaintiff Jane Doe filed an action on behalf of her minor daughter Jill Doe in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Somerset County, against Defendant XYC Corporation. The complaint alleged that because the company knew or should have known that its employee, Jane's husband and Jill's stepfather, was using his work computer to view and download child pornography, XYC had a duty to report Employee to the authorities, and that XYC negligently breached that duty, resulting in Employee's ability to continue photographing and molesting Jill Doe. The employee in question, an accountant for XYC, had been cited and reprimanded on numerous occasions for accessing pornographic cites, including child pornography, at his workstation. In June 2001, Employee, who had been secretly photographing and videotaping his 10-year-old stepdaughter at home in nude and semi-nude positions, transmitted three of these photos over the Internet from his work computer in order to gain access to a child pornography site. Following a search of his work space and computer by the Prosecutor's Office, which turned up numerous pornographic images and communications on child pornography cites, Employee was arrested. The lower court, responding to Jane Doe's specific allegations, granted summary judgment for Defendant both because Employee's conduct at home, the illicit photographing and molesting of Jill Doe, was not under the company's control, and because Defendant did not have the duty to investigate its employees' private communications, therefore indicating an absence of proximate cause linking the company to the harm suffered by Jill.