Can failure to filter porn spam be considered sexual harassment to employees?

[regic]

Employee charges employer with sexual harassment because the employer's spam filters failed to filter out porn spam  :

If a court ever decided that an employer's failure to filter all porn spam is sexual harassment then ISPs and email service providers would be guilty of sexual harassment too.

In today's litigious society, common sense is often out the door with some juries with the "stick it to the man" mentality are eager to give large awards even when no real faults are found.  In one of our more heated TechRepublic debates, member "sostermann" posts "Can porn spam be considered sexual harassment to employees?"  Sostermann tells of a new employee who has complained to upper management stating "This is now border line harassing!  Some employees would consider this sexual harassment." 

It would be unreasonable to hold an employer liable for any vulgar message than an employee may come across.

full article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=190

[bargainbloodhound]

The comments are here: http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11189-0.html?forumID=3&threadID=192859&start=0&tag=fdlead2

There isn't any way to filter 100% of spam or even porn spam unless you stop accepting ALL emails from outside your company. I'm having a hard time seeing how the employer could be guilty of sexual harassment because 3rd party email made it through a spam filter.  ???

[jezebel]

It would be unreasonable to hold an employer liable for any vulgar message than an employee may come across.

Vulgar messages from outside the company, yes it would be unreasonable because the employer has limited control.  From inside the company, yes it is unreasonable to blame the employer if the message sending was a one-time event, and no it isn't unreasonable to hold the company liable if there is a repeated pattern of vulgar messages being sent and the employer hasn't taken steps to discipline the senders.

[girdhar]

Hi,
I am agree with you ,it not possible to stop all the spam.And I don't think that sexual spams should be considered as sexual harassment.Though this is the responsibility of the employee one can not blame them for it.