Archive for the ‘Court Rulings’ Category
Australian state criminalizes workplace bullying
Monday, June 27th, 2011
Brodie Panlock 2006 suicide victim
News from the Australian state of Victoria confirms passage of the world's first anti-bullying law to criminalize bullying. Now, when bullying happens there, police can be called, instead of state health and safety investigators.
The law was prompted by the September 2006 suicide by 19 year-old waitress, Brodie Panlock, who was tormented by three older coworkers at Cafe Vamp in Melbourne since starting work there in 2005. They poured beer and oil on her, taunted her as fat, stupid, ugly and a whore, physically restrained her so that the other could pour fish sauce on her, spat on her, and offered her rat poison after an earlier failed suicide attempt. Her tormentors -- Nicholas Smallwood, 26, (with whom Panlock had had a sexual relationship that did not stop his cruel mistreatment), Rhys MacAlpine, 28, and Gabriel Toomey, 23 -- were convicted in Feb. 2010 under occupational health and safety laws and fined a total of $85,000. The cafe owner, Marc Luis Da Cruz, and his company were ordered to pay $250,000. According to WorkSafe Victoria (the government's health and safety regulatory agency), the penalties were among the largest fines ever imposed.
(more...)
Tags: Brodies' law, Hon. Richard Clark, stalking, Victoria, workplace bullying
Posted in Court Rulings, Employer Action/Inaction, Legislative Campaign | 1 Comment »
U.S. Supreme Court (again) crushes American workers; Wal-Mart smirks
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
Betty Dukes at SCOTUS
The June 20, 2011 Supreme Court decision in the Wal-Mart v. Dukes case (1) insulted any worker who dares complain about discriminatory mistreatment at work, (2) made it harder for individuals to join together for lawsuit efficiency in a class action to go up against a behemoth multinational employing corporation, (3) ignored and rewrote a 45-year legal precedent, and (4) cemented Justice Scalia and the conservative block’s motivation to serve corporate interests over those of ordinary working Americans.
Tags: Betty Dukes, Brad Seligman, Ginsburg, Gisel Ruiz, Impact Fund, Rule 23, Scalia, SCOTUS, VP People, Wal-Mart v. Dukes
Posted in Announcements, Court Rulings, Employer Action/Inaction, Social Justice | 3 Comments »
Grand jury finds workplace bullying a problem within county government
Thursday, June 16th, 2011
In Ventura County just south of lovely Santa Barbara, California, a remarkable and unusual thing happened. A grand jury (GJ) was convened to act like consultants contracted to investigate complaints (one of their roles in that county) about workplace bullying by current and former county workers. The GJ as investigator concluded that bullying is a problem and employees deserve protection from it. An investigation conducted by HR might have concluded differently (as it nearly always does). The GJ reported that HR procedures are not trusted. Said the county HR director, John Nicoll, “We do not tolerate employees being mistreated because they’ve filed a complaint.” This directly contradicts facts in the GJ report. Note how outsiders found the truth about bullying.
Tags: grand jury, HR, John Nicoll, Ventura County, Workplace Bullying Institute
Posted in Bullying in the News, Court Rulings, Employer Action/Inaction | 2 Comments »
Company with sadistic Manager will pay $41.6 million penalty
Sunday, June 12th, 2011
News from East St. Louis federal District Court: A young woman who was subjected to some of the grossest imaginable humiliation and harassment won a $95 million jury victory. $80 million was for punitive damages against the company, Aaron’s (Rents as in rent-to-own), that earned a profit of only $118 million last year. The jury sent the statement that most of that profit should be turned over to one former employee, Ashley Alford.
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Tags: Aaron's, Ashley Alford, assault and battery, EEOC, emotional distress, O'Fallon, Richard Moore, sex harassment
Posted in Court Rulings, Employer Action/Inaction | 2 Comments »
Mass law and responsibility for bullying in schools
Friday, May 7th, 2010
On May 3, Massachusetts Gov. Patrick signed into law (with much fanfare) S2404, a bill that languished until two headline-grabbing student suicides were traced to bullying by other students. Middle school student Carl Walker-Hoover hanged himself in 2009 and high school student Phoebe Prince did the same in Jan. 2010. Legislation was reflexively proposed to hold adults (educators, paraprofessionals, administrators, school nurses, cafeteria workers, etc.) responsible for stopping bullying when they see it or at least report it to the school principal. The principal, in turn, can decide to call or not to call law enforcement.
Tags: Carl Walker-Hoover, Desert Sands Unified School District, Deval Patrick, MA, Phoebe Prince, S2404, school bullying, Sioux City Schools, Work Doctor
Posted in Court Rulings, Employer Action/Inaction, Social Justice | 4 Comments »
A CEO Goes to Jail, Finally
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
No, it’s not one of the Wall Street gang. It’s Dick Gillman, the infamous CEO of the Republic Windows and Doors plant in Chicago. He’s in jail now on $10 million bail.
Posted in Court Rulings, Social Justice | 1 Comment »
U.S. Case — $11.65 Million Jury Award
Friday, May 15th, 2009
U.S. Emotional Distress Case Draws Record $11.65 Million Jury Award
Associated FMLA Violation by Employer
by Dee McAree
The National Law Journal
11-11-2002
A case in which an employee charged that he was retaliated against for taking time off under the Family Medical Leave Act to care for his aging parents has triggered an $11.65 million award.
The recent Chicago verdict — one of the largest won under FMLA — is just one of many that employment lawyers say they expect to see as baby boomers are faced with the predicament of caring for aging parents. In 1998, Chris Schultz, a 25-year veteran employee of Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Ill., was the esteemed “MVP Employee” with his picture hanging in the hospital lobby.
But two years later, he was out of a job. Lawyers for the 45-year-old Schultz sued the hospital in Schultz v. Advocate Health, No. 01C-0702 (N.D. Ill. June 5, 2002), claiming that he was unfairly penalized for taking time off to care for his aging parents.
Schultz, who worked in maintenance, was entitled to take 12 weeks intermittently over the course of a year after his request for family medical leave was granted in 2000. (more…)
Tags: FMLA, IIED, lawsuit
Posted in Court Rulings, Social Justice | 1 Comment »
First U.S. “Bullying” Trial
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Doescher vs. Raess, Indiana, Marion County (Indianapolis), March 2005
Jury found Dr. Raess guilty of battery, awarded plaintiff Doescher $325,000
Expert witness: Dr. Gary Namie, WBI
Appellate Court reversal
2008 Indiana Supreme Court restoral of trial verdict and award for plaintiff
Read the entire story and view the Supreme Court hearing
Tags: bully MD, healthcare bullying, trial, US courts
Posted in Bullying Tutorials, Court Rulings, Social Justice | Post a Comment »
Helen Green Wins Court Victory – UK
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
British Worker Awarded £800,000 (US$1.5 million) in Bullying Payout
August 2, 2006
A City (London) worker has won £800,000 in damages from Deutsche Bank in a landmark workplace bullying case. The award is said by legal experts to be particularly high and likely to be appealed.
High Court judge Justice Owen said that the campaign at the secretariat division of the international banking firm Deutsche Bank Group Services (UK) Ltd. against Helen Green involved a “relentless campaign of mean and spiteful behaviour designed to cause her distress” that left Green on some occasions crying silently at her desk. She worked there from 1997 to 2001.
Owen awarded her a total of $1.5 million for pain and suffering and loss of past and future earnings. He also ordered the bank to pay her legal costs, beginning with an interim payment of $650,000.
The largest part of the award is the £640,000 awarded for future loss of earnings and a pension, and it is this portion which marks the case out as unusual.
“We have seen cases like this before a number of times but the court has awarded such a large amount because it took the view that this person would not be able to work at this salary level for a long time in the future,” said Tom Potbury, a lawyer specialising in employment law at Pinsent Masons. (more…)
Tags: Deutsche Bank, Green, UK
Posted in Court Rulings, Employer Action/Inaction, Health Care | 1 Comment »
Emelise Aleandri
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
Sometimes people think that the only people targeted for bullying are weak. In adulthood, that is rarely true. Most of the time, targets are superior performers, stars. Here is one case illustrating the situation where the insecure (and very short napoleonic) bully targeted the more talented and gifted (but subordinate) woman.
Dr. Emelise Aleandri was one of two victorious plaintiffs in a lawsuit against City University of New York. Her bully, Joseph Scelsa, degraded this professional woman, stole her creative works and subjected her to humiliation at an institution of higher education in such a way that Dr. Gary Namie, expert witness in the case, described his outrageous conduct as the worst he had read about nationally. Scelsa treated Aleandri as a worthless person. Obviously, there is a different, objective realistic way to characterize the accomplished woman.
Read about Dr. Aleandri’s lawsuit against the City University of New York (CUNY) that settled for $1.4 million.
Tags: Aleandri, CUNY, Scelsa
Posted in Bullying Tutorials, Court Rulings | 6 Comments »
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