Insurer Suspends Staff Over Smutty Email

December 18, 2000

Insurance group Royal & SunAlliance has suspended some 40 employees from its Liverpool office after they accidentally emailed a smutty image to a director.

No one was fired following the incident, but about 40 workers have been indefinitely suspended after what is believed to be a doctored image of popular cartoon character Bart Simpson fell into the wrong hands.

Employees at the insurance firm are claiming that the email was simply an example of innocent and juvenile humour, but the company director who sparked the investigation obviously thought otherwise.

The incident comes less than a week after law firm Norton Rose was clouded by scandal when employee Bradley Chait circulated an email to friends containing details of a sexual encounter with PR executive Claire Swire.

The email promptly went global, attracting a large amount of adverse publicity for the firm. Although Chait claimed the email was a hoax, a nationwide hunt for Swire traced her back to west London.

As a result, Norton Rose has reportedly begun disciplinary action against Chait, and Swire is in hiding from the press. A poll on a website dedicated to debating the email revealed that 43 per cent of visitors reckoned that Chait should be sacked "for betraying Claire's trust".

First published on uk.internet.com

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