Retaliation claim lost by plaintiff due to failure to include it in EEOC charge; highly offensive racial remark kept out at trial

Watson v. O’Neill, No. 03-1541 (8th Cir. 4/7/04) illustrates a few useful points:

1) If you file an EEOC charge, be sure you include all grounds of discrimination.

2) If you’re defending a discrimination lawsuit, always check the original charge to see if the grounds of discrimination in the lawsuit match those in the charge.

Here the Plaintiff’s retaliation claim was thrown out because it had not been included in the EEOC charge.

Also interesting in this case is the disallowance of evidence of a very nasty racial remark even I choose not to print. (Curious? Read the case.)

It was too remote in time and not made by a key decisionmaker.

Could have gone the other way, and that might have thrown the case the other way too. It was a judgment call; a judges’ discretion on such matters can have a huge impact on the outcome of a lawsuit, and be very difficult to overturn on appeal.

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