Four Allergan Employees Accused of Sending Porn on Work Email

(MoneyWatch)  An Allergan employee has failed to win a legal appeal after he lost his job for sending porn on his work email address. The man, Noel Geraghty of Kilmeena in Ireland, claimed that three other Allergan employees had sent porn on their work email and were not fired, according to the Mayo News.

However, Geraghty was the only one who sent the material to an outside address -- creating the interesting legal prospect that under Irish employment law you can get fired for sending porn to external addresses but circulating it in the office is just fine.

Geraghty worked at Allergan from 1999 to 2006. He got into trouble following a classic internet screwup:

Mr Geraghty explained that he had meant to send the e-mail to a friend and he did not think that there would be two people in the country with nearly the same e-mail address.

Here's how Allergan's HR works if you get caught sending porn:

He was called to a meeting on June 16, 2006 and was told that his job was under threat because his actions were serious. He was told that he had sent e-mails and he initially denied this, as he was not thinking straight. There was a threat of legal action against the company.

Mr Geraghty said he thought he had no option but to resign otherwise other people would lose their jobs. The Human Resources (HR) manager told him that if he resigned he could get his job back in September of the same year.

The HR manager also later that day told him that if he did not resign then he would be dismissed and that if he was sacked, he would never work there again.

So he resigned, sued ... and didn't get his job back.