In Australia, an appeals court has “overturned a ruling giving $160,000 compensation to a woman who claimed she was discriminated against by not being allowed to work from home.” Two years ago a tribunal ruled against the publisher of the Hansard parliamentary reports, saying it had unreasonably required subeditor Deborah Schou to attend work in person on days when Parliament was sitting although she had asked to stay home and work via modem. The appeals court, however, found the tribunal’s view of the matter “inconceivable”. (Ian Munro, “$160,000 workplace ruling overturned” , Melbourne Age, May 1).
Posts Tagged ‘workplace’
$3M for employee’s road rage
Truck driver Rickey Barron and the husband-and-wife Englands had a traffic altercation on Interstate 85; after an exchange of obscene gestures, the truck driver confronted the two at a gas station, punched Sandra England in the face, then drove off, dropped off his truck, and disappeared to the world.
So the Englands sued the trucking companies that employed Barron. The theory? The trucking companies knew that Barron had speeding tickets and should’ve fired him. So, a driver’s speeding tickets apparently makes a trucking company liable for a driver’s criminal assault. A judge let this get to trial, and a Coweta County, Georgia jury decided to “send a message” and awarded $3M, two thirds of which are punitive damages against the trucking companies. (Blair Meeks, “Road Rage Victim Gets $3 Million”, WXIA, Apr. 27).
“Soldier sues city for damages for stress in Iraq”
In Cherokee, Iowa, Vernon Fick, who was dismissed as a police sergeant last year, wants his job back and is suing the city on age-bias and other charges. In addition to seeking reinstatement, Fick “claims he couldn’t get a job anywhere else and was forced to join the military, which sent him to Iraq”, so he “is seeking damages for emotional stress and strain from serving in a war zone. … The lawsuit said the Army became his only ’employment alternative’ because the city falsely told other potential employers in the area that he had committed misconduct.” His attorney is Stephen Avery of Spencer. (AP/Creston News Advertiser, Apr. 9)
Wal-Mart: target
“Encouraged by the press criticism, entrepreneurial trial lawyers, eyeing Wal-Mart’s deep pockets with glee, have made it perhaps the biggest private-sector target of the nation?s plaintiffs’ bar. In just ten years, the number of pending lawsuits against Wal-Mart has increased fourfold, to 8,000, and the company has tripled the size of its litigation department. … Wal-Mart faces a growing number of potentially costly class action lawsuits, exemplified by a sex-discrimination suit brought by the Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll firm, notorious for getting Texaco to pay $176 million to black employees in a discrimination suit.” (Steven Malanga (Manhattan Institute), “What Does the War on Wal-Mart Mean?”, City Journal, Spring). See Jul. 7-9, 2000 and more links: Feb. 1, 2004; Dec. 4, 2003; Jan. 11, Jun. 14, and Aug. 29-30, 2001; Sept. 6-7, Sept. 25-26, Nov. 15, and Dec. 13-14, 2000; and Dec. 2, 1999. More: we are linked by Always Low Prices — Always, a blog whose mission is to chronicle “The Best and the Worst about Wal-Mart” and which is put out in part by Kevin Brancato of George Mason U. and the economics blog Truck and Barter. (More: Apr. 19, 2005).
Texas court stops workers comp end-around
Workers’ compensation laws generally prohibit workers from suing their employers, but three pipeline workers tried to circumvent this and supplement their workers’ compensation payments by suing their employer’s owner, a holding company. A trial court judge allowed the suit to proceed, and a jury awarded $122 million in 2000; the Corpus Christi appeals court has now reversed. (“El Paso wins appeal in plant blast”, Houston Chronicle, Apr. 7; Coastal Corp. v. Torres, Mar. 25).
“Bizarre Hoaxes On Restaurants Trigger Lawsuits”
If it becomes just a little more expensive to get a fast-food meal these days, it’s in part because a hoaxer–perhaps a single individual in north Florida–is calling restaurants around the country and persuading gullible managers to strip-search employees and customers. Restaurants, fearing lawsuits, are conducting defensive training to inculcate the common sense needed to avoid being fooled by such a call. (Steven Gray, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 30; Editorial, “Strip search is no ‘prank'”, Arizona Republic, Apr. 4; Charles Williams, “Restaurant Industry Warns Members to Beware Strip-Search Hoax”, Charleston Post and Courier, Apr. 2; “Lawsuit Filed After Strip Search Hoax”, WCVB, Feb. 26).
Update: rescuers can’t sue over shock of witnessing disaster scene
Sanity prevails in the Carlsbad, N.M. case we noted last Jul. 25: “A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed on behalf of 26 firefighters and emergency medical personnel seeking damages from El Paso Natural Gas Co. for emotional pain and suffering they say they suffered after an August 2000 pipeline explosion.” The emergency response personnel were physically uninjured themselves but wanted cash for the trauma of witnessing the disaster scene. U.S. District Judge William Lynch, however, cited a longstanding principle of law known as the firefighter’s rule, which “states that a firefighter or police officer is prohibited from recovering damages for injuries arising from the normal, inherent and foreseeable risks of his profession.” (Erin Green, “Firefighters’ lawsuit dismissed”, Carlsbad Current-Argus, Mar. 22).
Nurse Cullen’s references, again
Among the reasons dangerous employees’ reputations often don’t catch up with them, according to USA Today: “Laws that strictly limit what employers can ask applicants, including about arrests. In California, workers are entitled to triple damages if they prove a misrepresentation by a former employer cost them a job offer.” The paper weighs in with an editorial recommending stronger laws shielding employers from being sued over candid references (“How dangerous employees continue to get new jobs”, Mar. 22)(see Mar. 3 and links from there).
Rail union head got FELA kickbacks
“The president of the United Transportation Union pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy on Thursday, admitting that he solicited bribes from lawyers trying to get access to lucrative legal work for rail workers.” In a scheme that dated back to 1995, Byron Boyd and three other officials of the Cleveland-based union “solicited cash from lawyers who wished to represent injured rail workers in personal injury lawsuits against rail employers. Those are potentially very lucrative suits since there is no limit to legal damages under federal law. … The men got at least $477,000 in cash”. (“Transportation Union Chief Admits to Racketeering”, Reuters, Mar. 12). “U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby said a scheme like the one Boyd was involved in is not uncommon in labor unions and the federal government will continue to investigate such schemes. … The case was handled out of Texas because five of the lawyers that paid money as part of the scheme were from the Houston area and they cooperated with prosecutors, Shelby said.” (Juan Lozano, “Union president pleads guilty to labor racketeering”, AP/Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Mar. 11). Railway workers are covered by the Federal Employers Liability Act (FELA), which affords more lucrative recoveries than does workers’ compensation law; they have also been major filers of asbestos claims.
“Mexico urges Latino janitors to join class-action suit”
Although the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 ruling in Hoffman Plastic Compounds v. NLRB barred illegal-alien workers from suing over the loss of jobs it was unlawful for them to accept in the first place (see Apr. 3-4, 2002), our enterprising bar continues to regard illegals as a promising clientele for employment litigation. For example, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has filed a class-action lawsuit against California grocery chains Albertson’s, Ralphs and Vons alleging that the stores violated the law by hiring independent-contractor firms to provide janitorial services; it claims they owe janitors who worked for these firms various retroactive benefits to which they would have been entitled had they been direct employees of the grocery chains. On Monday the Mexican consulate in San Diego lent its support to the campaign and urged janitors to sign up for the lawsuit, which is expected to go to trial in June. It is considered likely that many of the workers are illegals, but “Steven Joaquin Reyes, an attorney for the Mexican American legal aid group, said the workers do not have to be fearful because the judge in the case has already ruled that the workers’ immigration status is not relevant to the issue of whether they were paid fairly” — wink-wink, nudge-nudge (Edward Sifuentes, “Mexico urges Latino janitors to join class-action suit”, North County Times, Mar. 15). For more on the many-pronged legal campaign to make Southland grocery chains sorry they won their recent dispute with the United Food & Commercial Workers union, see Feb. 1.