An administrative judge for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) awarded $231,425 to a former civilian technician for the District of Columbia Air National Guard, finding that she had endured months of sexual harassment from a senior coworker while serving at Andrews Air Force Base.  According to the Federal Daily News, Vikki Rouleau complained to [...]

Sexual harassment plaintiffs received some welcome news from the Second Circuit in February, when the Court in Summa v. Hofstra University joined the majority of circuits in deciding that employers may be held liable for sexual harassment on the part of nonemployees to the extent the employer negligently responds to that behavior.  As Katz, Marshall [...]

On February 25, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York to dismiss a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a former employee of Seneca Foods Corporation (“Seneca”).  In Barrows v. Seneca Foods Corporation, Jeffrey Barrows alleged that his [...]

Dr. Carol Warfield, formerly of a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, will receive $7 million from the hospital to settle her claims of gender discrimination, making the settlement the largest for a gender discrimination suit in Massachusetts history.  According to Warfield’s lawsuit, the claims came as a result of [...]

Prospective sexual harassment plaintiffs in California should be sure to take a look at their employment contracts following a California appellate court decision finding that a trial court had erred when it ruled that an employment contract’s arbitration agreement was unconscionable.  The decision was rendered in a case brought by Maribel Baltazar against the clothing [...]

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) has been vigilant in recent months in pursuing sexual harassment and retaliation cases against offending employers across the country.  In addition to large settlements with Sparks Steakhouse and Carrols Corp., which we wrote about in this blog recently, the EEOC has settled or  initiated several additional cases just over [...]

Carrols Corp., the world’s largest Burger King franchisee, has settled a class sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit brought by 89 female employees across the United States for $2.5 million.  The lawsuit, filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) on behalf of the employees, charged that Carrols subjected the class of women – many of [...]

Twenty-two victims of workplace sexual harassment and retaliation at Sparks Steak House will receive a total of $600,000 from the upscale New York City restaurant.  According to an EEOC press release, the employees, all male waiters at Sparks, were subjected to harassment based on their sex, chiefly by one male manager, over a nearly eight-year [...]

A retaliation lawsuit has been filed against the ultra-conservative Family Research Council (“FRC”) by Moira Gaul, the organization’s former director of women’s and reproductive health.  Gaul alleged in her lawsuit that she was treated poorly and ultimately terminated after she filed a sexual harassment complaint against her supervisor.  While her supervisor is not identified by [...]

Sexual harassment can often lead to the double victimization of individuals who have been subjected to sexual harassment, according to a study which will be released in an upcoming issue of Organization Science.  The study, entitled Double-victimization in the Workplace: Why Observers Condemn Passive Victims of Sexual Harassment, was co-authored by Kristina A. Diekmann of [...]