Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘harassment law’

Birthday cards actionable?

Perhaps not, but a UK insurance firm isn’t taking any chances. With new laws in place prohibiting age discrimination and age harassment, Alan & Thomas insurance brokers has barred the circulation of birthday cards signed by the entire staff, who occasionally write jokey statements about the perils of aging.

Julian Boughton, the firm’s managing director, said: “The new rules outlawing age discrimination are a potential minefield for both employers and employees. Every business should be taking action. Often employees don’t realise the implications of what they are writing.”

A member of staff said: “I think it’s stupid really. People like to joke about other people getting older, and it’s only a bit of fun.”

The Employment Equality (Age) regulations 2006 came into force on Oct 1, prohibiting direct or indirect harassment or victimisation on the grounds of age.

Neil Gouldson, an employment law specialist at the Manchester-based firm Rowe Cohen, said: “Gags in birthday cards about people being ‘over the hill’ will need to be curbed.”

(Richard Savill, “Firm halts office cards for fear of ‘ageist’ comments”, Telegraph (UK), Oct. 12) (h/t F.R.).

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Sexist beer ads

Now it’s a group of Italian female lawyers who are suing to suppress that particular variety of commercial speech. (Nick Pisa, “Parking is no joke as Italy’s women sue over beer ad”, Daily Telegraph (U.K.), Sept. 17). For earlier precedents in the U.S. (Stroh’s sued over “Swedish bikini team”) and Canada (Ontario vs. Molson’s and Labatt’s ads), see Carlin Meyer, “Sex, Sin, and Women’s Liberation: Against Porn-Suppression”, Texas Law Review, April 1994 (PDF), at footnote 314. Another example: RealBeer.com, July 16, 1999 (Venezuela).

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Suit: Your niece is ugly

A Massachusetts family is suing a Maryland family over what they call an arranged marriage for their 37-year-old son, Pranjul K. Pandey. The Pandeys called off the marriage after travelling to New Delhi when they decided the bride was too homely. (The former lawyer for the bride’s family denies that there was an arranged marriage, and that the meeting was informal.) The suit seeks $200,000 for fraud, violation of civil rights, and emotional distress. Among the defendants is Emergent BioSolutions Inc., a Gaithersburg company that employs the uncle of the woman in question. One can’t blame the lawyers for this one: the plaintiff, Vijai B. Pandey, previously convicted of bank fraud, is a frequent litigant, and has filed this case pro se. (Marla A. Goldberg, “Family sues over ‘ugly’ bride”, MassLive.com/The Republican, Jul. 5 (via Romenesko)).

Update: The Smoking Gun has the complaint.

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$61 million for racial slurs

Federal Express drivers Edgar Rizkallah and Kamil Issa, both of Lebanese descent, say the nasty epithets from their manager went on for two years, which means the award works out to $15 million per epithet-year, $290,000 per slur-week, or $40,000 per imprecation-day. It was divided between $11 million in compensatory damages to the two men and $50 million in punitives. The jury assessed $1 million in damages personally against the supervisor, Stacy Shoun, terminal manager for the FedEx Ground facility in Oakland. He’ll certainly think twice about behaving that way again, won’t he? (Jordan Robertson, “Jury awards $61 million to two FedEx drivers in harassment suit”, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, Jun. 3). Update Oct. 2: judge reduces award to $12.4 million.

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“False Rape Accusations May Be More Common Than Thought”

Yeah, and thought’s common enough (Wendy McElroy, FoxNews.com, May 2).

All levity aside, this is a serious column laying out some statistics adduced a decade ago by Peter Neufeld and Barry C. Scheck of the Innocence Project:

They stated, “Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained, the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing. Specifically, FBI officials report that out of roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases since 1989, about 2,000 tests have been inconclusive, about 2,000 tests have excluded the primary suspect, and about 6,000 have “matched” or included the primary suspect.”

The authors continued, “these percentages have remained constant for 7 years, and the National Institute of Justice’s informal survey of private laboratories reveals a strikingly similar 26 percent exclusion rate.”

If the foregoing results can be extrapolated, then the rate of false reports is roughly between 20 (if DNA excludes an accused) to 40 percent (if inconclusive DNA is added). The relatively low estimate of 25 to 26 percent is probably accurate, especially since it is supported by other sources.

McElroy cites a number of caveats which should be kept in mind by those who would cite the Neufeld/Scheck numbers. At a minimum, however, they should serve to refute the still-sometimes-heard contention that false accusation is exceedingly rare. More from McElroy: “Duke Rape Case Raises Issue of Protecting Identity of Accused”, FoxNews.com, Apr. 26; “Did Justice or Politics Drive Arrests in Duke Lacrosse Case?”, Apr. 18). More on Duke case: Cathy Young, syndicated/Reason.com, May 2. P.S. A riposte, and comments, at Ampersand.

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BREAKING: California Supreme Court throws out “Friends” sexual harassment suit

We’ve been covering the case with disbelief since 2004 (see Feb. 15 and links therein). Hooray for common sense.

David Bernstein or Eugene Volokh will no doubt have apt commentary at Volokh’s blog. (Update: Advantage Bernstein!)

Lyle v. Warner Brothers Television Productions:

“Based on the totality of the undisputed circumstances, particularly the fact the Friends production was a creative workplace focused on generating scripts for an adult-oriented comedy show featuring sexual themes, we find no reasonable trier of fact could conclude such language constituted harassment directed at plaintiff because of her sex within the meaning of the [California Fair Employment and Housing Act].”

(via Bashman).

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New tort in California?

The California legislature passed a law in 1998 barring the intentional transmission of HIV, and now the California Supreme Court is considering whether to create a new tort of negligent transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. The coverage of the oral argument in Bridget B. v. John B. makes it sound more like a legislative debate than a legal discussion, but only one justice is noted as commenting on that fact. (Mike McKee, “Calif. Supreme Court Sees Need for Disclosure of Sexual History”, The Recorder, Apr. 6).

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