A prison librarian alleged offensive comments, unwarranted attention and sexual interest by an assistant warden. The court dismissed her case, noting that she did not allege that the assistant warden “requested a sexual act, touched her inappropriately, discussed sexual subjects, showed her obscene materials, told her vulgar jokes or threatened her.”
A Lowe’s Home Center employee discussed her sexual harassment informally with a department manager in the store break room. Whether the employee acted reasonably and followed Lowe’s sexual harassment policy is a question for the jury.
A male advertising manager complained about sexual harassment by a female general manager. After the employer refused to handle the complaint anonymously, the advertising manager insisted on handling the situation himself. His actions excused the employer from having to fully investigate the sexual harassment claim.
As part of the settlement, Morgan Stanley agreed to work on the following: management and employee training programs, anti-discrimination policies, complaint tracking, promotion and compensation analysis, exit interviews of female employees leaving the Company voluntarily and retention and promotion programs.
Amy Wiginton filed a class action sexual harassment complaint. Her attorney asked her previous employer to preserve emails which allegedly evidenced sexual harassment. The Company preserved only the emails pertaining to Ms. Wiginton. Other emails were destroyed. The Magistrate Judge found the destruction of electronic evidence to be in bad faith and possibly sanctionable.
A female clerk alleged four years of daily lewd and offensive remarks made about women in her presence. The court looked at: (1) the frequency; (2) severity; (3) whether the statements were threatening or humiliating or an offensive utterance; and (4) whether the statements unreasonably interfered with work performance. The Eighth Circuit dismissed the case.
A server at a hotel restaurant filed a complaint for sexual harassment, among other things, after she was fired. Her complaint was dismissed because the hotel had an effective sexual-harassment reporting policy and the plaintiff unreasonably failed to take advantage of the hotelís corrective policy.
A nurse’s supervisor was found to be “boorish, offensive and uncouth.” However, the employer was not responsible for his sexual harassment because it took immediate corrective action. The supervisor was barred from “solo encounters” with the nurse. This response was deemed effective.
The Seventh Circuit writes: “the parties appear to have simply collected the sum total of all the unpleasant events in Volovsek’s work history since 1992, dumped them in the legal mixing bowl of this lawsuit, set the Title VII-blender to puree and poured the resulting blob on the court.” One “barefoot and pregnant” comment stood out because it was made around the time Volovsek was denied a promotion. Her failure to promote claim is therefore good enough to be presented to a jury. Her harassment claim is dismissed because Volovsek failed to show harm.
Two alleged victims of sexual harassment failed to complain pursuant to company policy. Their case was not dismissed because supervisors allegedly witnessed the sexual harassment and failed to take corrective action.