A racy interracial love scene download while researching an advertising target cost a Daily Press advertising representative his job - when his try at e-mailing the clip home to protect his colleagues from it caused a computer glitch at the paper and a tech worker reported the clip to his superiors.
"It is ironic that an employer who depends on the First Amendment for its very existence would be so quick to censor its employees," says Lawrence G. Walters, a Florida First Amendment attorney hired by the fired ad rep, Howard Wornom.
The clip is from the controversial new James Toback film, Black and White. The Web site where Wornom stumbled on the clip was referred to as mild by the site itself (www.aint-it-cool-news.com), but Wornom e-mailed it home rather than risk inadvertent exposure to Daily Press colleagues in case it contained objectionable language, Walters says.
Wornom never received the e-mail because its send caused the computer glitch. The paper claims the clip's content caused sexual harassment, Walters says. "The film clip is protected speech," he says, "and could not cause sexual harassment under any legal definition.
"My client was trying to do his job and got fired because of information he attempted to access on the Internet."
Walters is very familiar with cases of Internet activity turning into job terminations. He's the defense attorney in a number of such cases, the most high profile of late being the case of George and Tracy Miller, the Arizona nursing couple whose off-duty adult Web site cost them their staff jobs at Scottsdale Healthcare Hospital. The couple are planning to sue to regain their jobs after a direct appeal to the hospital failed and their suspensions became terminations earlier this month.
Palm Pictures, which produced Black and White, says they posted the clip - which had to be cut to satisfy the Motion Picture Association of America into dropping the film's rating from NC17 to R - to let people see it for themselves and judge for themselves, with a disclaimer that it was not suitable for ages 17 and under.
