- High-school basketball player gets TRO over enforcement of technical foul after pushing referee. [Huntington News; Chad @ WaPo]
- Madison County court rejects Vioxx litigation tourism. [Point of Law]
- Faking disability for accommodation disqualifies bar applicant [Frisch]
- DOJ antitrust enforcement doesn’t seem to be consistent with U.S. trade policy position. [Cafe Hayek]
- Professor falsely accused of sexual harassment wins defamation lawsuit against former plaintiff, but too late to save his job. [Kirkendall]
- Watch what you say dept.: Disbarred attorney and ex-felon sues newspaper, letter-to-editor writer, Illinois Civil Justice League. (His brother won the judicial election anyway.) [Madison County Record; Belleville News Democrat; US v. Amiel Cueto]
Posts Tagged ‘harassment law’
Update: Pacenza v. IBM–Lawsuit alleges Internet sex chat addiction is entitled to ADA protection
James Pacenza’s $5 million lawsuit against his employer for firing him for seeking cybersex at work is still pending today after being filed in 2004. It first got coverage in Business Week and Overlawyered in December, was picked up in News of the Weird a few weeks ago, and then covered by the AP today (h/t W.F.). Pacenza blames his sex- and Internet-addiction on his Vietnam War service and triggers from the Gulf War; as evidence that he should be rehired, he cites to his obscene phone calls to strangers and visits of prostitutes. We have the major filings:
- Complaint
- IBM motion for summary judgment (part 1)
- IBM motion for summary judgment (part 2)
- Pacenza opposition to summary judgment
I’m inclined to be mildly sympathetic to Pacenza’s situation (as opposed to his lawsuit); a chat-room is hardly more disruptive to productivity than an Ebay visit, and Pacenza’s largely automated job had a lot of waiting time. But the employment-discrimination laws are not a civil-service review of whether a firing was a good management decision: IBM’s rationale for firing Pacenza was in response to employees complaining that the chat-room was sexually offensive after Pacenza had been previously warned about visiting pornographic sites; IBM was in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation because of the risk of a sexual harassment lawsuit, and failure to act against Pacenza might’ve been used against it in other litigation as evidence of a “pattern or practice” of condoning sexually offensive activity at work.
(Updated to note earlier Overlawyered post.)
Cathy Young on the Marcotte affair
Sexual harassment — by a 4-year-old
A letter from the La Vega Independent School District warned DaMarcus Blackwell that his son was involved in “inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment” after the boy hugged a teacher’s aide and “rubbed his face in the chest of (the) female employee”. The boy was four years old at the time. (Emily Ingram, “Hug lands 4-year-old in suspension”, Waco Tribune-Herald, Dec. 10; Volokh, Dec. 12).
Social hosts and mistletoe
Legal hazards of Christmas party-giving (Alan Kopit, Lawyers.com, undated recent; Dahlia Lithwick, “Fa-la-la-la-lawsuit”, Slate, Dec. 1).
P.S. And here’s a report from the U.K. claiming that many employers there are curtailing the posting of holiday decorations at workplaces from stated motives that include avoiding offense to those of other faiths and a variety of safety concerns. (Amy Iggulden, “No decorations, please, it might cause offence”, Telegraph, Dec. 6).
December 2 roundup
- Tennie Pierce update: only 6 out of 15 members vote to override mayor’s veto of $2.7M dog-food settlement (Nov. 11). [LA Times]
- Reforming consumer class actions. [Point of Law]
- Judicial activism in Katrina insurance litigation in Louisiana. [Point of Law; Rossmiller; AEI]
- What will and won’t the Seventh Circuit find sanctionable? Judge Posner’s opinion gets a lot of attention for snapping at the lawyers, but I’m more fascinated about the parts where the dog didn’t bark, which isn’t getting any commentary. [Point of Law; Smoot v. Mazda; Volokh; Above the Law]
- Montgomery County doesn’t get to create a trio-banking system. [Zywicki @ Volokh and followup]
- “The Hidden Danger of Seat Belts”: an article on the Peltzman Effect that doesn’t mention Peltzman. [Time; see also Cafe Hayek]
- Pending Michigan “domestic violence” bill (opposed by domestic violence groups) criminalizes ending a relationship with a pregnant woman for improper purposes. [Detroit News via Bashman; House Bill 5882]
- Did Griggs causes distortion in higher education? I’m not sure I’m persuaded, though Griggs is certainly problematic for other reasons (e.g., POL Aug. 12, 2004). [Pope Center via Newmark]
- The Kramer cash settlement. [Evanier]
- Jonathan Wilson gives Justinian Lane a solid fisking on loser pays. [Wilson]
- Speaking of Justinian Lane, for someone who says he was “silenced” because I didn’t post a troll of a comment on Overlawyered, he’s sure making a lot of whiny noise. Hasn’t corrected his honesty problem, though. [Lane]
- The stuff Gore found too inconvenient to tell you in “An Inconvenient Truth.” [CEI]
- Islam: the religion of peace and mercy, for sufficiently broad definitions of peace and mercy. [Volokh]
- One year ago in Overlawyered: photographing exhibitionist students at Penn. Jordan Koko doesn’t seem to have gone through with the threatened lawsuit. [Overlawyered]
Update: verdict against hip-hop magazine
Hip-hop mag told to pay fired editor $15 million
Kimberly Ososio, canned from her job as an editor at The Source magazine, portrayed the magazine’s offices as a “raunched-out workplace where executives watched porn, smoked pot and called female employees “b——.” An attorney for the magazine admitted that coarse and profane language was common there but said it was aimed at all parties, “not a gender-specific conduct”. A jury agreed with Osorio’s claim that she was sacked for complaining about sexualized goings-on; she also complained of defamation, but lost on sexual discrimination and harassment counts. (Jose Martinez, “Hip-hop mag bagged”, New York Daily News, Oct. 24; The magazine already faces bankruptcy proceedings due to other business problems. (Leonard Greene, “Editor’s New ‘Source’ of Woe”, New York Post, Oct. 25; Peter Carlson, “Hip-Hop Editor Wins Suit Over Her Firing”, Washington Post, Oct. 25; Joshua Rhett Miller, “Ex-Source editor hopes ruling redefines rap”, Metro New York, Oct. 25).
“Consent”
With echoes of the debate over campus “sexual consent” policies, here’s a funny short film that has been around for a while, but which I didn’t hear about until lately. It’s directed by Jason Reitman, who went on to do Thank You For Smoking. Adult content (original from Atom Films/YouTube version)(h/t: reader M.C.).
Inviting conservative author = hostile environment?
Two teachers have sued an elite Seattle private school charging race bias in the terms of employment: “Among the plaintiffs’ complaints was Lakeside’s invitation to conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza to speak as part of a distinguished lecture series.” (John Iwasaki, “Teachers accuse Lakeside School of bias”, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Oct. 13)(via Taranto). More: Paul Secunda agrees something is amiss here (Oct. 19).