John Hancock Financial Services was justified in firing two employees for violating its email policy, a Boston court ruled. The judge, Rya W. Zobel, dismissed a case brought by Nancy K. Garrity and Joanne Clark after they were fired in July 1999, reported the Boston Globe.

The pair were turned in by coworkers who compained that they were sending a sexual explicit messages they had received on their office computers from Internet joke sites and other third parties. The women had claimed that Hancock invaded their privacy and wrongfully fired them after it searched the files on their computers and those of coworkers.

The judge ruled that "Even if (the women) had a reasonable expectation of privacy in their work e-mail, (Hancock's) legitimate business interest in protecting its employees from harassment in the workplace would likely trump privacy interests." 

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