I’ll make it clear from the outset that I am laying a trap for you, but can you, for the sake of clarity, outline for us all exactly what happened in the “Hot Coffee McDonald’s lawsuit”? More specifically:
What were the specifics of the incident which led to the filing of the suit?
What sorts of evidence concerning the defendant were presented at trial?
What was the finding of fault in that trial, and what was the award, if any?
If you aren’t going to cite any, how are we to decide for ourselves whether they are “petty” or “frivolous”? We can probably all make up a petty or frivolous lawsuit, but that’s what’s referred to as a “straw man argument.” If you’d like to cite some real-world examples, I’m sure we’d all be happy to respond to them. We even have real live lawyers here who can discuss them knowledgeably.
Most honest-to-goodness “frivolous” lawsuits, I would venture to guess, are dismissed by the judge before they even get to voir dire.
Are you going to change the question every time that someone dismantles one of your premises?
This is a ridiculous expansion of the concept of sexual harassment, which was designed to protect against women being forced to have sex in order to get a job.
The amount of the award is ridiculous.
Unfair things happen in the workplace every day. You can’t have a system of a jury second-guessing every management decision and handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars when they disagree.
It’s striking that the attorney received three times as much as the plaintiff.
Since the defendant was a state school, the impact of this case is to punish all citizens of California, which seems unfair.
Thanks for the link, amarinth. According to the LA Times story:
So according to the plaintiff’s lawyer, the plaintiff (Ms. Banack) was subjected to an adverse employment decision because of her gender, and there was apparently evidence to back that up. The jury agreed. Where’s the frivolousness?
navtechie: Frivolous lawsuits are bad. They should not happen. Does that take care of your proposed “debate,” or would you care to do a little work by specifying what makes a lawsuit frivolous and how we should weed them out? Or would you just prefer to talk about things in a vacuum?
I don’t think that the fact that you wouldn’t be comfortable filing this sort of suit means much about whether other people would be comfortable. Some people are assholes. Perhaps the reason you’re reluctant to give people the benefit of the doubt is because you’re not an asshole. But that doesn’t mean that no one else is.
Bovine excrement. Sexual harassment law has never been exclusively about quid pro quo harassment. Either back up that assertion or withdraw it, please.
Why is $75,000 for a gener-motivated letter of reprimand ridiculous when it is likely to spell the difference between tenure and unemployment?
You’re right. That’s why the plaintiff has to present evidence of gender discrimination or the case will be dismissed right quick. The Federal Reporter is filled with cases doing exactly that. But gender discrimination is illegal, and rightfully so, which is why we do let juries decide when there is evidence of discrimination. Would you prefer to let employers harass and terminate on the basis of gender to their hearts’ content?
Federal Title VII (and analogous state laws) entitles a prevailing plaintiff to reasonable attorney’s fees, based on the hours actually worked by the attorney in litigating the case. The idea is that most instances of gender/race/religion/etc. discrimination in the workplace would never be challenged if the victim had to shell out the bucks for an attorney. Thus, employers are not able to get away with small-scale discrimination that would otherwise slip through the cracks because the plaintiff couldn’t pay a lawyer or find one who would take a small-stakes claim on contingency. If you want to eliminate workplace discrimination, this is an excellent idea.
Is it fairer to just let the state of California sexually harass the plaintiff? Besides, the people of the California (through their representatives in the state legislature) have already given their consent for the state to be sued, so they seem to be quite happy that way.
This is not true. I’m not going to ask you for a cite, since I know you never provide them, but will rather simply point out that sexual harrassment law stems from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the title which covers Equal Employment Opportunity.
While “quid pro quo” harrassment is undoubtedly addressed by Title VII, and is patently illegal, Title VII also covers the concept of “hostile working environments,” and has several decades of Supreme Court case law backing it up.
I agree, ** minty** Frivolous lawsuits are bad. But don’tchathink what’s worse is reading a two paragraph editorial about a lawsuit and deciding that you’ve got sufficient information to judge the merits of the case?
reading the facts from the news source (thanks!!!), the U issued a written reprimand to an Assoicate professor. The reprimand was based on a letter of complaint that had been sent. However, the facts contained in the letter were shown to be wrong. And, after it was shown that the facts were wrong, the U refused to withdraw the reprimand.
So, I don’t see that it’s a frivolous suit at all, and the awards in the case seem appropriate (how much do you think the punishment should be for harming some one’s work reputation based on a lie and refusing to withdraw it after the lie has been demonstrated? Hmmm?), the seperate award to the attorney should demonstrate also to the U that when you’re in the wrong, fighting it is not the fiscally responsible thing to do.
I’ve read both provided links, and neither tells me what Banack supposedly did to get in trouble with the Wildlife Service, or why the fact of her reprimand (or maybe the text of the reprimand) is about her gender. Could someone please summarize or supply a link that does?
And navtechie, you’re not going to get far or last long in GD with attitudes like “bullocks to citing.” This is not the forum for wild-ass guesses and declarations.
sputter
While that certainly falls under the pervue of sexual harassment, your definition seems a wee bit narrow (though I’ll keep it in mind while I go pinch my extremely attractive coworker’s ass ;)).
I’m impressed that you managed to pull all of that out of minimal detail presented in a newspaper article. Or do you have a source I’m missing?
When you want to discuss frivolous lawsuits, don’t title your thread “Sexual Harrassment: I’ve had enough thankyouverymuch” then cite a case where whether sexual harrassment even occurred (vs. gender discrimination) is questionable.
So, what happened is that the professor apparently did not break any rules. Some one wrote a letter claiming she did, the U chose to reprimand her w/o investigation of the substance of the allegations. In the trial, all of this came out, which would explain why the jury forewoman said ‘every piece in the letter was proven false’.
As to if it was sexual harassment or not. It apparently is the U’s position that it(the reprimand itself, the failure to investigate the substance of the allegations, the refusal to withdraw the reprimand when it was shown the allegations were wrong) wasn’t due to her gender. I’m not sure what they’re claiming is really well thought out. The facts, as determined by the jury were that this employee was harmed (ie reprimanded) based simply on allegations in letter that were later proven false. So their defense is that all employees are subjectable to harm based on false charges w/o investigation?
Think about it - some one writes a letter to your employer claiming you did all sorts of awful things, you get punished as if it were true, and it wasn’t true in the first place. Then, after it’s shown to be false, the employer refuses to withdraw the reprimand? I am having a difficult time believing that an attorney (for the U) didn’t advise them to withdraw the letter of reprimand, and settle this one out of court ASAP.
You lawyers will always win the battles of the words. I can back up my assertion with the dictionary.
What does “sexual harassment” mean? Well, “harass” means
To irritate or torment persistently.
To wear out; exhaust.
To impede and exhaust (an enemy) by repeated attacks or raids.
I’m at work so I’m blocked out from looking up “sexual,” but we know what it means. To the man on the street, the term “sexual harassment” meant persistently demanding sexual favors or tormenting in some sexual way. At the time the law was passed, I thought it covered a boss feeling up his subordinate’s breasts. I didn’t know that it covered criticizing a subordinate for wrong-doing.
Of course, Minty and pld are correct; the law as written turned out to be much broader.
But, it seems to me that the OP asked less about what the law is, than about what it ought to be.
The amount of the award paid by U was $311,000.
The question is, did the court do justice? Based on the facts as reported, I don’t think so. More generally, I have limited confidence in jury’s ability to do justice. So, in my ideal world, they’d only look at gross cases of misbehaviour.
How well do you think this Great Debates site would function if a poster could be fined $311,000 because of a post that some jury didn’t like? Would that sort of structure be conducive to more effective functioning?
It’s not just about “something the jury didn’t like,” december. It’s about proving to the jury that illegal gender discrimination occurred. Here, the jury determined that Prof. Banack received a reprimand because she was a woman, and awarded damages accordingly. If this isn’t justice, what would your version of justice look like?
Also, the $311,000 figure you cite was not an award of damages. Damages were assessed by the jury at $75,000, and that’s what the plaintiff received. The additional money is an award of reasonable attorney’s fees, as determined by the judge. The plaintiff doesn’t receive a penny of the attorney’s fees.
What is describe is not sexual harrassment under federal law (or EEOC interpretation of federal law - California law may be different, and once again IANAL) but may be gender discrimination. Neither article outlines what “pieces formed a quilt” that made the case that this was gender based discrimination.