The Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court Sunday rejected an appeal from a local software company to overturn an earlier court decision forcing the firm to pay two months salary to an employee fired for visiting a pornographic Website during office hours.

The Xuhui District People's Court ordered the company to pay 11,200 yuan (US$1,349) to its former employee surnamed Hu for terminating his contract.

Hu filed suit against his company after he was fired last September.

"The company accused me of visiting a pornographic Website during working hours on September 4 and fired me later that day," Hu told the court.

The company doesn't allow employees to visit Websites not related to their work. But Hu insisted he had never visited the Website in question. He said a pornographic page popped up when he opened another site.

Hu began working for the company as a programmer last January. But the company insisted Hu did visit the pornographic website that day.

An employee who was in charge of the company's computer network told the court Hu visited a pornographic site for four minutes.

Another employee told the court she saw Hu going through pages not related to his work that afternoon.

But the court said the company didn't have enough evidence to prove the Website Hu visited was pornographic because the witnesses were employees whose testimony couldn't be trusted.

"And the company couldn't fire Hu just because he visited Websites not related to his work," a court officials said.

(Shanghai Daily August 30, 2004)