Lawyer Loses Case on Sex Poems? We Are Back in Business!

Whew – a somber day followed by a day of dead air – we're lucky anyone's still out there. Are you still out there?

Well, we hope so, because CE is returning to its bread and butter today, starting with a cautionary tale coming out of the 1^st Circuit that we had to ignore on Monday.

We'll spoil it for you: if you're going to write love notes to coworkers, don't sue when you get fired.

Until now, we've always assumed British guys in their 60's living in the states could do pretty much whatever they wanted. (Girls go crazy for that accent. It's ridiculous.) Apparently, so did David Bennett. The ex-pat IP lawyer was fired from a corporation in Massachusetts, and he sued for age discrimination, among other things.

The problem was, he was fired for allegedly penning a series of anonymous, sexually-tinged love poems to a coworker. Though he denied writing the poems, he was ultimately implicated because many of the spellings and words were in the King's English, and not our west-of-the-atlantic, bastardized hog-talk. We can only assume this was a way of invoking the bright line rule about girls and accents espoused above. Plus, they hired a handwriting expert, which is an area of science we honestly thought was made up for 80's cop shows and CSI.

The other (read: actual) important thing to remember from the case is that, in the end, it didn't matter whether Bennett wrote the poems or not. From the ABA Journal:

Whether or not Bennett actually was the author was "largely beside the point," the panel wrote. "(W)hat counts is whether the decision-maker ... believed the plaintiff to be the author and, if so, whether he acted on that belief in deciding to send the plaintiff packing."

One last thing - when they asked Bennett if he wrote the poems he denied it, and then he said he had never composed a poem in his life. A search of Bennett's desk revealed a whole collection of other poems in his handwriting. Remind you of anyone? We'll simply repeat our often-repeated plea: Before you file that lawsuit that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and take years to fully resolve, THINK ABOUT HOW DIRTY YOUR OWN FRIGGING LAUNDRY IS!

Or don't. This stuff is a boon for us.

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Job Bored - 11/1

• And you thought those models were going hungry by choice... - MarketWatch.


• If his boss hadn't put him on the feminine hormones he could've avoided the cross-dressing and that gay affair. Kind of gives new meaning to "on the basis of sex". - The Guardian.


• Atty General: "I'm resigning not because I'm a quitter." No, you're resigning because you owe $3.7 million to the employees you arbitrarily replaced on racial grounds, lost witnesses and dismissed the 2 biggest cases on the docket, then housed an armed robbery suspect in your house. Only in New Orleans. - L.A. Times

Recent Settlements:

• B&H Video in New York: $4.3 Million - Gothamist
• Chevron: $5.5 Million - San Jose Mercury News
• Morgan Stanley: $46 Mil. And no, we're not missing a decimal point. - Investment News

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“THE PRICE IS WRONG????”

We all remember the opening….the late great Rod Roddy, in his sequence suits (I want to know where I can get one of those things) would yell out a contestants name…..”Joe Blow, c’mon down, you’re the next contestant on The Price is Right”….and like mad the contestant would run front and center to “contestants row” to play crazy games for huge prizes.

Of course the man overseeing all of this action is one of the greatest actors of all time - Bob Barker. (That’s right I said actors. And Bob Barker. Ever seen Happy Gilmore? The price is wrong, B***H.) For millions of us, staying home sick from school meant we got to watch The Price Is Right. No matter what ailed you, TPIR always made you feel better, and if you are like I am, you genuinely liked Bob Barker, almost like a grandpa.

Deborah Curling, however, is not like you and me. She is a former employee of the Price is Right who recently filed a lawsuit against Bob Barker and other producers claiming, among other things, that she was sexually harassed over an extended period of time.

Curling claims that because she testified on behalf of another employee who was suing TPIR, that Barker and the other producers sexually harassed her and created a hostile work environment. This is not the first time the 83 year Barker has been sued. There have been several former employees, many of them the models that display the products and prizes, that have sued Barker, alleging sexual harassment. Many of those cases were settled out of court. Curling cited those cases in her complaint.

We here at Current Employment take this kind of thing very seriously, and will continue to follow the developments in this case. At time of press, CBS had no comment regarding the lawsuit.

For more info on this story click here for a link http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071005/us_nm/barker_lawsuit_dc_2

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The 7th Circuit - Obsessed with Sex?

Discrimination, of course. Get your minds out of the gutters, seriously.

Honestly, though, a quick Westlaw search pops up 5 pretty salacious cases in the past 30 or so days for the Honorables over on Dearborn Ave. (Well, 4 salacious and 1 Indianapolis case about equal pay for park rangers, but we'll take it.)

The most noteworthy of the bunch, if only for the press, is clearly Bernier v. Morningstar, the best urinal-gazing case we've seen since we started typing bathroom terms into Westlaw as 1L's.

In what will surely find its way into emp. disc. classrooms as a "why did any attorney take this case" moment, Todd Bernier sued his former employer, Morningstar, Inc. (the investment firm), for sex discrimination and retaliation. Why? Because another guy on his floor, who he knew was gay, apparently kept eyeing him. First it was subtle stares in the hall, but what pushed it over the edge for Bernier was when the coworker made "an overt, purposeful and glaring look" at Bernier while they were in adjacent stalls in the bathroom.

Of course, Bernier did what any self-respecting business professional would do - he ignored his company's discrimination policy, and in lieu of confronting the coworker directly sent him an "anonymous" instant message over the company's computer system that read "Stop Staring! The guys on the floor don't like it." Genius. Espcially considering the real reason the coworker's "overt" stares was a lazy left eye.

We're not kidding.

More on this and another recent decision below. Click the jump.

The coworker took the IM as a clear sign of discrimination against him, followed the discrimination policy, and after, what I'm sure was about 8 minutes in the IT department, they found out the anonymous message came from Bernier. Bernier denied sending it, got fired, and filed an EEOC claim stating his termination was retaliation for notifying his employer he was discriminated against.

Honestly, never in our lives have we wished more that we made the trip across the street to hear oral arguments. The case was heard by Posner, Easterbrook and Wood. Judge Wood wrote the opinion – CE's guess is because Posner and Easterbrook both tried, and their computers exploded under the weight of the commentary.

Needless to say, Bernier went away empty handed – the court determined Morningstar was not put on notice by his anonymous IM to a gay coworker, and therefore couldn’t have retaliated against him.

Poor guy. Should’ve just used the stall.

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Earlier last week another sex discrimination opinion came down, again on the side of the employer, but this one was plain old "fired for being a woman" brand. In Hossack v. Floor Covering Associates of Joliet, a woman sued her employer after she was fired from her job as an office manager.

We tend to think - at least in our beloved 7th Circuit - the first few lines of the opinion are going to tell you where the ruling's going to go. Hossack's started like this:

"Plaintiff...had an extramarital affair with a fellow employee...while working..."

Yeah, that's not going to end well for you.

Seems the Plaintiff and a co-manager of the store, both married, had been cavorting while on the job and she was claiming that she had been discriminated against because they fired her and kept him.

We won't make any calls on the wisdom of the ruling (there's some debate at CE's dinner table over this one). Our favorite part is the testimony of the owner of the company when they asked him about company policy:

Defense counsel asked [the owner]: "Are you aware whether any employees have had a romantic relationship while employed at Floor Covering Associates of Joliet, Inc.?" To which [the owner] replied: "Yes sir, I am." He thien went on to explain that: "I'm aware that in the Joliet store today of 17 people over the past number of years there have been 12 employees or more - 12 employees that I know of who have had romantic relationships with other employees."

12 of 17?! For real? Screw Match.com - the Joliet FCA store has a 70% success rate! Spread the word!

In case you're worried about retaliation for your dallience - don't. Remember, the court found in favor of FCA - and noted that the owner "stated that none of these employees had been fired or disciplined because of engaging in a romantic relationship."

That's all for today - pleasure doing business with you.

Bernier v. Morningstar
Hossack v. Floor Covering Associates

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