Subscribe by RSS
Subscribe by EmailDoes YOUR Company Exercise Reasonable Care to Prevent and Promptly Correct Any Harassing Behavior?
Here is another relatively simple, yet important “case study” of a recent lawsuit involving racial harassment.
In this company, two African-American trash collectors for a major waste disposal company, alleged that their supervisors regularly hurled racial slurs, insults, and so forth, thus creating a hostile environment during the mid-1990s.
Over the next half dozen years or so, until they filed a lawsuit, these two employees said they regularly reported the harassment to management. Despite the company doing an investigation at some point in time, and even firing one person, the plaintiffs claimed the harassment continued.
The company apparently had an appropriate policy in place the entire time.
It should be noted that the plaintiffs never claimed to have suffered physical threats nor lost any compensation, benefits or other perks of the job.
So why did a jury award each plaintiff 2.6 MILLION dollars?????????????????
Read on for the answer……….
Remember that when no “tangible employment action” has been taken against an employee, the employer can raise an affirmative defense to try and avoid liability.
Specifically, the company must show that:
it exercised reasonable care to prevent and correct promptly any harassing behavior; and
The plaintiff unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities provided by the employer or to avoid harm otherwise.
The trial court ruled that indeed, the company had met both of these “prongs” for a successful defense. But the appellate court ruled that the company FAILED to satisfy the first prong, based on testimony that the company failed to adequately enforce the policy.
Obviously, the key here is that management must take action!!!
The specific lessons, according to the EPS folks, are:
Follow their own policies, fully and consistently;
Take all complaints seriously;
Conduct a full, fair and impartial investigation of the complainant’s claims;
Consider bringing in a neutral party to conduct the investigation in an effort to avoid any actual or perceived bias;
Resist the temptation to end an investigation without a conclusion, merely because the statements of the complainant and the accused are contradictory;
Take appropriate corrective action designed to end the harassment, based on the objective findings made during the investigation.
Read here for more details!
Sphere: Related ContentRelated Posts
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing.
Hello! actually it was a relief to read this. how much proof does it take? When HR abuses it’s power and is discriminatory in administration of Anti-discrimination policy, and has support of executive team members, it is scary. Especially as the target is someone in a protected class.
what evidence is necessary to win?
they make life worse than miserable.
thanks for your blog!