go! figure: the porn defense

The interisland airline war just got weird. Mesa Air, parent of go!, is in court, accused by its legacy rivals of improperly using proprietary data and documents it gleaned when it came forward as a prospective buyer during the bankruptcies of Hawaiian Airlines and Aloha Airlines. Until this week the matter turned on mostly dry legal issues. Now Mesa has isolated one of its senior executives, its chief financial officer, first putting him on leave and then claiming in court that computer files pertinent to the case were accidentally deleted by him while he was deleting porn. Allegations of unlawful preservation by Mesa of confidential files from Hawaiian have centered on this executive. Hawaiian lawyers said he deleted files they had a right to see as they prepared their case. The pornography erasure defense -- "he wasn't doing questionable thing A, he was doing questionable thing B" -- was met with disbelief by Hawaiian lawyers. But as near I can tell, Mesa lawyers didn't snicker or anything. I'll leave it to the court to try to figure out what the truth is. But I can tell you this: displaying pornographic images on your workplace computer is basically illegal, because it is against the law to create "a toxic workplace," and people have lost their jobs over it. Anything you say, do, or display at the office that offends co-workers can be a serious offense. Some have apologized for their transgression, expecting to be rebuked, only to be fired by an employer that wants to innoculate itself from a lawsuit. Ironically it may be better for Mesa stock if the market disbelieves the story and thinks it's a legal expedient. Otherwise, Mesa's finances may be managed by someone who surfs porn at work and isn't good with computers.