An employee can
allege an injury not covered by your workers compensation or general liability.
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Some Words you Never Want To Hear: |
Negligent
Supervision |
| Negligent Hiring |
| Harassment |
| Retaliation |
| Wrongful Termination |
| Discrimination (Age, Race,
Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, Disability) |
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Regardless of how fraudulent it may be,
someone has to defend you and pay if a judgement is made against you. It's always easier
to have an insurance company write the check.
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The
2 secrets
How to minimize your odds of being sued
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Have a written
Employee Handbook |
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Use a written
Employee Handbook |
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The Supreme Court has ruled that employers are responsible
for what they don't know about employees' actions with one another. The only effective way
to protect yourself from problems is to have a written program in place giving each
employee information about what is 'appropriate behavior', how to lodge a complaint
and the consequences of 'inappropriate behavior'. Obviously, any written program must be enforced uniformly and without prejudice.
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Some
Examples |
| Age
Discrimination |
You're re-organizing.
Some staff are laid off that are not computer literate in favor of those who are. The
affected employees are over 40 and they sue claiming age discrimination. |
| Race
Discrimination |
The only employee of
a specific race is fired based on performance and replaced by an employee of another race.
The fired employee claims race discrimination. |
| Sexual
Harassment |
A supervisor offers a
promotion to a subordinate in exchange for a sexual relation. The employee sues claiming
sexual harassment. |
| Retaliation |
An employee is hurt
on the job and is off work for a period of time receiving worker's compensation benefits.
Later, the employee is fired for legitimate reasons. The ex-employee sues claiming
retaliation for filing a work comp claim. |
| Disability |
An employee is fired
because the employee lacks the ability to perform his/her job. The employee sues claiming
discrimination due to his/her disability. |
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- Sexual Harassment Re-Defined - from
Best Review (Jan, 1999)
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A pair of Supreme
Court rulings handed down in June, 1998 exposed employers to more sexual harassment
lawsuits than ever before and took away a potential defense. The decisions make
executives at a company's corporate headquarters responsible for the actions of employees
in other offices. In the past, there was no ruling in place that required employers to be
accountable for misconduct if they did not know that such misconduct was taking place.
The rulings essentially require companies to have zero
tolerance anti-harassment policies and a grievance procedure that clearly spells out and
communicates how employees can launch complaints through the chain of command.
The Supreme Court ruled in Kimberly Ellerth vs. Burlington Industries Inc. and Faragher
vs. Boca Raton that employers are liable for a supervisor's sexual misconduct toward an
employee.
In the Faragher case, a lifeguard sued for harassment although she never complained to
management. In Ellerth, the employee sued her employer because her boss made suggestive
sexual advances, although she did not lose her job.
The number of sexual harassment cases has been growing since 1991, when the Anita
Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings drew national attention to the subject.
Two large sexual harassment lawsuits were settled last year. Mitsubishi Motor
Manufacturing of America, Inc paid $34 million to several hundred women employed at its
plant in Normal, Ill. A Swedish-owned pharmaceuticals company, Astra-USA paid $10 million
to settle a lawsuit involving dozens of female employees.
Legal experts warn that the new rulings will expose employers to greater liability than in
the past. In comments accompanying one of the rulings, Supreme
Court Justice David Souter said that preventing harassment is "one of the costs of
doing business" for employers from now on.
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