…discussed on PointOfLaw.com this morning.
Posts Tagged ‘workplace’
Wal-Mart sex-bias class action
…discussed today on PointOfLaw.com, including a mention of how some of the allegations in the case hark back to the EEOC’s great crusade against Sears in the 1970s and 1980s.
Worker’s comp: trauma over visitor’s remark
New Jersey: “County freeholders Tuesday paid nearly $26,000 to a Crest Haven Nursing Home employee who claimed she suffered a psychiatric disorder in 2001 after a nursing home visitor made an inappropriate remark to her.” Nursing assistant Cynthia Allen, a longtime employee whose lawyer said she had a good work record, “alleged that she was feeding another patient in late December 2000 when a nursing home visitor said ‘I bet you have some fresh stuff.'” Although the visitor later denied saying anything and no one else heard the comment, Allen said it had been made in a sexually offensive way and that she had felt intimidated when seeing the visitor on two subsequent occasions. Medical experts agreed that she had suffered psychological trauma over the incident. A freeholder who voted for the payment nonetheless termed it “bizarre” and said “This is what’s wrong with our legal system.” (W. F. Keough, “Visitor?s remark to worker at Crest Haven costs county $26,000 in compensation claim”, Press of Atlantic City, Jun. 23 (reg)).
Mustn’t undermine their authority
Reversing a seven-year-old precedent, the Massachusetts high court has ruled that even though employees enjoy an absolute right to seek jury trials rather than have their claims of bias adjudicated by the state antibias agency, MCAD, employers do not have a right to bring their case to a jury following an adverse MCAD ruling. In its May 6 decision, the court said that recognizing employers’ right to a jury trial, as it had done in a 1997 decision called Lavelle v. Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, was undermining the agency’s authority. Mustn’t do that! (“SJC decision curbs employer access to jury trial in job-related discrimination cases”, Boston Business Journal, May 7; “Bias case rulings may have wide impact”, BostonWorks.com (Boston Globe), May 23; “Q&A: MCAD’s Dorca Gomez, on jury trial reversal”, Boston Globe, May 16). The law firm of Foley, Hoag & Eliot (May 12, PDF) said the ruling “further stacks the deck against employers in discrimination cases”. Remarkably, the Massachusetts chapter of the ACLU had pressed to abolish employers’ right to jury trial, and hails the new decision in a press release which seems calculated to lull the casual reader into imagining that the two sides are somehow still endowed with symmetrical rights (by de-emphasizing complainants’ privilege of choosing which forum will hear the dispute). No doubt our friends at ATLA, with their frequent rhetoric about the need to prevent erosion of the jury system, will rise to deplore the stripping away of defendants’ access to juries. Right?
Oz: jilted wife wants stress damages too
Two months ago (see Apr. 8) a workers’ comp tribunal caused a furor in Australia by awarding $A28,000 to teacher Jeff Sinclair, who was fired over an affair with a teenage student. (“School for scandal”, Melbourne Age, May 3). Now Sabina Sinclair, the educator’s spurned wife, is also seeking compensation for psychological injury from the New South Wales education department over the incident. “I am really fragile,” she said. (Martin Wallace, “Jilted wife seeks damages”, Daily Telegraph/News.com.au, May 31).
Papa John’s Suit
Michael Harris, a 19-year-old delivering pizzas for Papa John’s, gossiped with a manager that his supervisor, Robert Shields, was sleeping with an employee. Shields found out, and he and Harris decided to resolve their differences by agreeing that Shields would punch Harris in the chest. Unfortunately, the punch caused cardiac arrhythmia and killed Harris. Harris’s family sued Papa John’s, and the Iowa Supreme Court ruled May 12 that a jury would need to decide if the punch was an “adverse employment action” entitling the family to damages from the employer, or a private matter.
Son sues father for discrimination
Steven Sarenpa’s father and stepmother were critical of Steven’s separation from his wife, and of his new girlfriend. Steven claims they yelled at him and called him a sinner for his adultery. But Steven wasn’t just their son–he was also their employee, so he’s sued his parents for religious and marital status discrimination in Minnesota federal court. The theory seems to be that parents lose the legal ability to express unhappiness with children in certain ways if they’re all part of a family business sufficiently large enough to be subject to federal anti-discrimination law. The parents argue that the fact that Steven’s wife and her uncle also worked at the company created workplace tension (especially when his girlfriend would drive him to work during his wife’s shift), and say that’s why they asked Steven to take some time off. (H.J. Cummins, “Son sues father after leaving job, marriage”, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 26) (via Romenesko).
“Did Workers Pay for the Expansion of Products Liability Law?”
AEI is hosting a conference on that question tomorrow at 2 pm. Participants are Sasha Volokh, Martin Grace, John Lott, and Jonathan Klick. (Sasha Volokh, “The Products Liability Revolution and Labor Markets”, May 22).
Judge flays bias suit’s “legal extortion”
U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent, famed for the tongue-lashings he’s dealt out to lawyers in the past, “has fined attorney Anthony Griffin nearly $18,000 for filing a lawsuit the judge termed an attempt to ‘legally extort money’ from the Galveston Independent School District.” Judge Kent “said Griffin, a nationally known black civil rights lawyer, conducted ‘virtually no meaningful investigation’ before filing a suit in which a fired administrator maintained the district paid her less than others because she is black. … ‘Even a minimal investigation into the facts and the law of this case would have revealed the abject frivolity of all of [plaintiff Sonia Boone’s] claims,’ Kent said. ‘Filing it shows either an ignorance of the law or an utter disregard for it, both of which are inexcusable.'” (Kevin Moran, “Attorney rebuked and fined”, Houston Chronicle, May 10). Unsurprisingly, attorney Griffin says he plans to appeal (“Attorney will appeal fines set by judge”, Galveston Daily News, May 12). For more on Judge Kent, see Sept. 6, 2001 and links from there.
Court rejects should-have-fired-us-earlier suit
The Fifth Circuit has rejected a claim that Employers Casualty Co. violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, otherwise known as ERISA, by wrongfully failing to terminate a group of employees during a reduction in force (RIF). The workers argued that being fired would have entitled them to an enhanced retirement package and that the company fell short of its fiduciary responsibility when it refrained from giving them the axe. (“Court rejects workers’ claim that they should have been fired sooner”, California Employment Law Letter/HRHero.com (M. Lee Smith Publishers), Feb.). The case was Bodine v. Employers Casualty, Dec. 12, 2003 (No. 03-20190).