Best Lawsuits Ever
As part of our never-ending quest to provide the finest in employment law education, we scoured the planet in search of the world’s most interesting employment lawsuits. Here for your reading pleasure is our official Top 10 Countdown . . .
#10: Security Guard Fired For Seeing Ghosts Entitled to UC Benefits
We start out in the great state of Iowa, where Wade Gallegos of Des Moines was fired from his security guard job for “seeing ghosts.”
According to state records, Gallegos was dutifully tending his post one night when suddenly a group of ghosts appeared on the scene, standing by a nearby car. Gallegos immediately summoned his supervisor and asked to be excused from duty. Unfortunately for Gallegos, the supervisor was unable to see the ghosts. He fired Gallegos five hours later.
When Gallegos sought unemployment benefits, the company challenged his application, arguing that he was fired for misconduct. The administrative law judge ruled that Gallegos’ visions of ghosts did render him unfit to be a security guard. However, the judge ultimately ruled in Gallegos’ favor, finding that the ghost-sightings were not the type of misconduct justifying a disqualification from benefits.
Afterward, Gallegos was still at a loss to explain the incident, saying, ”It was kind of like one of those out-of-body experiences.” My guess is that his employer felt pretty much the same way.
#9: DJ Gets $10.6 Million For Co-workers Noxious Perfume
A Detroit DJ was awarded $10.6 million for her employer’s failure to accommodate her alleged sensitivity to a co-worker’s perfume.
Erin Weber, a former top-ranked radio personality for WYCD-FM, claimed that she was fired in retaliation for her complaints about a co-worker’s perfume. The perfume was worn by another on-air personality, Linda Lee.
Weber alleged that she was allergic to a perfume called Tresor, described in ads as “romantic, sensual, emotional.” Weber claimed that the station refused to accommodate her requests that Lee not wear the perfume in the workplace. She said that exposure to Tresor made her lose her voice, resulted in absences from work and forced her to take medication. The effects were so severe that she said she once “felt an electric shock quell through [her] entire body.”
Weber claimed that the station did not adequately address her complaints and that Lee continued to wear the perfume. Among her allegations were that Lee ”intentionally” walked by her at the Downtown Detroit Hoedown while wearing the perfume. Said Weber: ”Linda nearly brushed past me and a cloud of perfume trailed behind me. To have brought the perfume with her suggests forward planning. This appears to be a premeditated attack which was entirely unprovoked by me in any way.”
Weber also claimed that the station and its owner “blacklisted” her following her firing, hampering her ability to work in the industry.
The jury awarded Weber $7 million in punitive damages, $2 million for emotional distress and $1.6 million in back and front pay. “I’m thankful that the jury took so much time to come to the right conclusion,” Weber said. “It’s a great day.”
#8: I Demand To Be Fired
In what is certainly one of the strangest claims in employment law history, a plaintiff sued because he wasn’t given the opportunity to be fired. Let me explain . . .
49-year-old R. Joseph Hewett sued Donald Trump and the producers of the TV show The Apprentice for age discrimination, claiming that he was unfairly deprived of the chance of hearing Trump tell him, ”You’re fired.” In allegations that turned the Age Discrimination in Employment Act on its ear, he contended that Trump wrongfully favored firing younger people and that older people should be given an equal chance to be abused by the multi-millionaire.
Hewett eventaully settled the case on undisclosed terms earlier this year. “I have reached a settlement but I am prohibited from speaking about it other than to say it’s satisfactory to all parties,” Hewett said. “This was never about a disgruntled applicant trying to get back at [Trump’s] organization, it just gave me an opportunity to advocated on behalf of a protected class.” According to Hewett, only two of the finalists in the show’s first six years were over the age of 40.
A Trump spokesman denied age discrimination, saying, basically, that Trump actively sought to fire persons from “all age groups.”
#7: Meatball Surprise
Apparently, the wife of a New York City cop felt that his job was too dangerous and that he really needed to spend more time at home with her. When the normal methods of persuasion didn’t work, she thought it would be a good idea to spike his meatballs with “six marijuana doobies” so that he would fail a drug test, get fired and have lots of time to spend with her.
Unfortunately for the cop, his wife’s plan worked. He got fired and sued but the Police Commission ultimately ruled that he should be “weeded” out of his job.
#6: Maternity Company Sued for Pregnancy Discrimination
In what has to rank as the least likely pregnancy discrimination lawsuit of all time, Motherhood Maternity, Inc. paid $375,000 to settle claims that it discriminated against multiple pregnant women.
The plaintiffs alleged that Motherhood Maternity – a company that operates stores specializing in clothing for pregnant women — refused to hire three applicants because they were pregnant. To compound matters, the company also allegedly fired an assistant manager the company thought was pregnant after she complained about the discrimination.
Ironically, the company was started by a pregnant woman, Rebecca Matthias. “Our business revolves around serving the apparel needs of pregnant women and we encourage having team members who are also pregnant and can provide firsthand product knowledge to our customers,” said Matthias.
Apparently, there was a bit of a gap between the company’s mission and reality.
#5: Semi-nude Wal-Mart Employee Sacked
A Wal-Mart greeter was fired for welcoming customers with a photograph of himself wearing nothing but a strategically placed Wal-Mart sack.
Dean Wooten was fired from the Muscatine, Iowa Wal-Mart after customers complained that they found the photo offensive. Wooten’s manager also wasn’t thrilled with the fact that Wooten allegedly told customers that Wal-Mart was rolling back expenses and that the sack represented the new employee uniform.
Wooten filed for unemployment benefits, but was denied. According to the judge, “A reasonable person would know the act of showing a naked body wearing a Wal-Mart sack would not be good for the employer’s business.”
#4: What If Your CEO Thinks He’s An Underwear Model?
What would you say to your CEO if he was being sued for sexual harassment and if: (1) he routinely conducted meetings wearing only his underwear; (2) his office prominently featured photographs of naked women; (3) he insisted on granting interviews to the press in which he would proudly display the nude photographs and — allegedly — engage in sex acts in front of the interviewer; (4) he personally appeared in ads for the company, proudly displaying his naked backside; (5) he openly dated a number of subordinates; and (6) this was not his first, or his second, or his third sexual harassment lawsuit, but his fourth?
Here’s what I would say: “I quit.”
#3: Diary of a Slacker
An Iowa judge denied unemployment benefits to a hotel employee who was fired for keeping a journal that described her truly impressive efforts to avoid work.
Emmalee Bauer, sales coordinator for the Des Moines Sheraton, made the following entries in a 300-page journal she kept on her work computer:
- I am going to be typing all my thoughts instead of writing all day. That way, there isn’t any way to tell for sure if I am working really hard or I am just goofing off.
- This typing thing seems to be doing the trick. It looks like I’m hard at work on something very important.
- I am going to sit right her and play Elf Bowling or some other nonsense. Once lunch is over, I will come right back to writing to piddle away the rest of the afternoon.
- I just have to get through the next seven hours and forty-six minutes and then I will be free.
- I don’t feel like doing a single worthwhile thing today. It’s 11:00 and so far I have stuck to that.
- It’s noon already and I don’t feel like I have accomplished a [expletive deleted] thing. Accomplishment is overrated, anyway.
- I have managed to waste half of the day doing nothing constructive. That isn’t exactly an easy task, either.
- I have an hour of time that needs to be wasted — I mean “spent wisely.” I know that’s a crock. I am only here for the money and, lately, for the printer access.
- I haven’t really accomplished anything in a long while . . . and I am still getting paid more than I have ever had before. It’s actually quite nice when I think of it that way. I can shop online, play games and read message boards and still get paid for it.
Not too shockingly, the judge concluded that Bauer’s writings evidenced a refusal to work and “amusement at getting away with it.”
Bauer reportedly is seeking a publisher for her journal so that she can share her work tips with the rest of the world.
#2: Dilbert and the Drunken Lemurs
In a case of art imitating life imitating art, a judge ruled in favor of an employee who was fired after posting a Dilbert cartoon likening managers to “drunken lemurs.”
The Catfish Bend Casino in Burlington, Iowa fired David Steward for posting the cartoon on an office bulletin board shortly after management announced that the casino would be closing and laying off 170 employees. “Basically,” HR Director Steve Morley testified, “he was accusing the decision-makers of being drunken lemurs.” “We consider that misconduct when you insult your employer.”
The cartoon depicted the following conversation between Dilbert and a friend:
Dilbert: Why does it seem as if most of the decisions in my workplace are made by drunken lemurs?
Friend: Decisions are made by people who have time, not people who have talent.
Dilbert: Why are talented people so busy?
Friend: They’re fixing the problems made by people who have time.
Steward testified that he posted the cartoon because he “thought maybe it would cheer some people up.” However, it elicited the opposite reaction from management and he was fired three days later for “not being a team player.”
Administrative Law Judge Lynette Donner ruled in favor of Steward, calling his actions a “good-faith error in judgment” rather than intentional misconduct.
Even Dilbert creator Scott Adams weighed in on the decision. “Most ‘Dilbert’ comics dont’ come right out and call management a bunch of drunken lemurs,” Adams said. “So I can see how this one might have been a tad over the line.”
The “art imitating life imitating art” part came shortly thereafter when a series of Dilbert strips lampooned the case. One strip featured the following exchange:
Boss: Our surveillance cameras caught you posting this anti-management comic on the wall. The comic compares managers to drunken lemurs. Do you think drunken lemurs are like managers.
Wally: No. Some lemurs can hold their liquor.
Another one took it a step further:
Catbert: Wally, I have to fire you for posting a comic comparing managers to drunken lemurs. You won’t be eligible for unemployment benefits unless you can prove you were stupid as opposed to malicious. Can you prove you’re stupid?
Wally: Is there another explanation for working here?
Completely Irrelevant Bonus Information: We conducted a poll to see how our readers felt about the decision. 77% agreed with the judge, 16% disagreed and 7% responded: What’s a lemur? For the benefit of the latter group, Webster’s defines a lemur as: any of various arboreal chiefly nocturnal prosimian primates (superfamily Lemuroidea) that were formerly widespread but are now largely confined to Madagascar and that usually have a longish muzzle, large eyes, very soft woolly fur, and a long furry tail. And, apparently, they can hold their liquor. Click here for a picture.
#1: The Case of the Lying Lovesick Lawyer
It was truly tough to narrow all the choices down to a single #1 favorite. But because this case featured a bad lawyer who lied and got caught by a crack team of HR professionals who did all the right things from an employment law perspective, it was tough to beat.
Here’s what happened . . .
A female employee of Saint-Gobain Corp. started receiving “sexually tinged” anonymous love poems at work. She suspected a company lawyer named David Bennett. Why? Some of the spellings in the poem were “British” and Bennett hails from the U.K.
Bennett vehemently denied writing the poems. In fact, he took it a step further and denied that he had ever written a poem.
The company’s HR department conducted a prompt and thorough investigation. First, a handwriting expert concluded that it was “highly probable” that Bennett was indeed the author of the notes. Second, a search of Bennett’s office turned up other poems written by Bennett, refuting his claim that he had never written a single poem.
But the true ”Columbo” moment came when HR interviewed Bennett and asked him to spell the word “meager.” When he spelled it ”meagre” — just as it had been written in the poems – they knew that they had their man.
Bennett continued his denials and even filed a lawsuit claiming age discrimination. But, thanks to the top-notch HR investigatory work, the judge threw out his claims and ruled in favor of the company.
Got an interesting case you’ d like to share? We’d love to hear about it. Shoot us an e-mail at blawg@na.manpower.com. Thanks!
