Maryland Lawyer Blog

Fired but possibly rehired Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod says she will pursue a lawsuit against conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart.

What happened was incredibly unfair to Sherrod and Breitbart should be publicly excoriated for what he did. But I don't understand why a lawsuit should come from this. Her reputation is fully intact and then some. She was offered her job back. She is going to write a book and make a fortune (you know it is coming). Things are great. The only way to blow it is to come off looking petty by filing a lawsuit.

The CNN story is here.

• Titans Lawsuit Against USC (one of many unnecessary lawsuits I've seen this week)

A recent study, Employment Practice Liability: Jury Award Trends and Statistics, examines wrongful termination claims. This review of federal jury awards found the median verdict in wrongful termination lawsuits is $182,333.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals issued its opinion in Giant v. Taylor, a race and sex discrimination case about a female truck driver for Giant whose problems with her employer began because she was late to work due to gynecological problems. The jury bought her case, awarding her $644,750 after a trial that took over a week.

It is a case worth reading for Maryland employment lawyers but I did not see much of interest for personal injury lawyers.

The Supreme Court ruled in a 504 decision today that white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a lower court decision in which Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven should not have dropped promotion exam, according to the court, because black and only two Latinos were likely to be promoted, based on the results. New Haven went with the "blame it on the lawyers" defense, saying that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

My opinion? I really don't have one. I have not spent the time to get up to speed employment law issues. At a glance, I can certainly see both arguments. My favorite Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, wrote the dissent. Gun to my head, I go with her. But I have an open mind.

Big Vanilla has agreed to pay $161,000 to settle a lawsuit the government filed against Big Vanilla for sexual harassment, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

According to EEOC’s suit, the Big Vanilla violated federal law by sexually harassing several female employees at Big Vanilla in Pasadena and Arnold, Maryland, the two locations the health club has in Anne Arundel County. The EEOC said four women were subjected to repeated and unwanted sexually offensive remarks and sexual advances and that three of the women were fired in retaliation for their complaints about the discrimination.

The EEOC also announced that in addition to the money Big Vanilla agreed to pay in the settlement, Big Vanilla Pasadena and Big Vanilla Athletic Club also agree to refrain from engaging in harassment on the basis of sex and from retaliating against employees who complain about it.

This is no big deal, this is obvious a requirement already imposed by federal law. But Big Vanilla also agreed to monitoring by the EEOC, to train its current and future managers on anti-discrimination laws, and to post notices stating its commitment to maintaining an environment free of sexual harassment and retaliation. In other words, the EEOC is going to babysit Big Vanilla to make sure it does not sexually harass women in the future.

Related Post:

Big Vanilla Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

According to the ABA Journal, there is no recession in the land of employment law. In 2007, the median employment discrimination verdict rose 70 percent to $252,000 from 2006. Employers won only 38 percent of discrimination cases in 2007, prevailing most often in race discrimination cases (43 percent) and losing most frequently in sex discrimination cases (30 percent).

Of course, it is worth nothing that this does not include the number of cases in which summary judgment is granted for the defendant which changes the numbers good bit.

Big Vanilla in Pasadena and Severna Park is being sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of four women for the sexual harassment of all four women and the firing three of them in retaliation for complaining, according to the Maryland Daily Record and the Baltimore Examiner.

Dawn Wooden, Joella Hopkins, Melissa Mendez, and Michelle Cabral said they had been subjected to “repeated, unwanted, sexually offensive remarks and sexual advances” by co-workers and supervisors since December 2006. The commission said the women were discriminated against by Big Vanilla on the basis of their sex and their work environment was “sexually hostile” due to offensive comments and unwanted touching. When they complained, they were fired by Big Vanilla (with the apparent exception of Ms. Mendez).

The EEOC said it is seeking monetary and injunctive relief against Big Vanilla, including back wages and compensatory damages, for the employees, and changes in Big Vanilla's employment policies.

Debra Lawrence, the EEOC supervisory trial attorney said that while the lawsuit against Big Vanilla currently involves four women "there are more in the works."

Related Post

It is difficult to prove age discrimination in the workplace. Because it is hard to prove the exact factors motivating a supervisor to fire one of his or her employees, many victims of age discrimination hope to illustrate a discriminatory culture in the workplace by offering the testimony of other employees who suffered the same treatment. A recent case now on appeal to the Supreme Court may result in the exclusion of this type of evidence, not only in age discrimination cases, but in cases of race and gender discrimination as well.

In this case, a federal District Court judge in Denver, Colorado refused to allow a 51 year-old woman, who is claming she lost her job due to age discrimination, to present the testimony of five other co-workers she claims were let go for the same reason. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new trial, stating that this type of evidence is always admissible when other employees under the protection of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act have also lost their jobs. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal filed by Sprint/United Management Company, Ms. Mendelsohn’s former employer, and will decide if this “me too” evidence is admissible. The New York Times reported that the justices in oral arguments on Monday seemed skeptical of this kind of evidence.

If the Supreme Court overturns the 10th Circuit and delineates a rule that does not allow such evidence, its position will be even more extreme than…drum roll please… the Bush administration, which has taken the position- through the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission- that evidence of this type, consistent with the Federal Rules of Evidence, should be admissible when relevant and when it would not confuse or prejudice the jury. If the Supreme Court disagrees, it means that the Supreme Court is becoming more pro-business and anti-plaintiff than the Bush administration. I find this scary.

Whichever way the Court decides, their decision will have a major impact on how future discrimination cases can and will be tried.

I read a 2003 ABA Journal article last night looking at a 1995 study that compared settled, litigated and arbitrated employment discrimination case outcomes. I found another article that makes the same claim (click here). That study found that both median and average jury verdicts in discrimination cases were at least three times higher than the comparable mean and median arbitration awards. I am not surprised to see a difference but three times higher is pretty stunning. These private arbitral systems seem to be structurally biased, as the EEOC called it, in favor of employers.

Today, Jury Verdict Research reports on its study examining trends in settlements involving discrimination claims from 2000 through 2006. The overall settlement median for employment discrimination claims was $70,000. Plaintiffs' settlements for disability and race discrimination claims were similar with a median settlement of $75,000.

There is one thing I find interesting about labor and employment litigation lawyers. If you are looking for a labor and employment lawyer in Maryland who defends management, you can find a million and one. Yet it seems like there are 1/100 the number of plaintiffs' employment lawyers in Maryland. If it takes two to tango and we are talking about litigation, don't the numbers of labor and employment lawyers on the defense and plaintiffs' side have to equally balanced? Even if you allow for the "it takes 5 defense lawyers to defend a deposition" phenomenon, I still cannot figure out the extent of the asymmetry.

(And, yes, if you are wondering, this is the day for quick short posts on the Maryland Lawyer Blog. I have some backlog of thoughts from the weekend.)

Four lawyers at Kollman & Saucier, whose practice focuses on labor and employment law, will be giving a seminar for Lorman Education Services at Inner Harbor Holiday Inn on December 5, 2007. I would imagine one of the topics will be Maryland's new law, that is effective today, that allows for suit by Maryland employers in state court for discrimination. Maryland's law is more expansive than federal law because it allows claims for discrimination claims based on sexual orientation, family status, and marital status.

Digging through my miscellaneous files today (an incredible hodgepodge), I found a Metro Verdicts Monthly reporting on median settlements and verdicts in employment discrimination cases in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Washington D.C. leads this pack at $206,000. Virginia's median is $150,000 while Maryland lags behind at $117,000.

While the categories vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, employment discrimination is essentially when an employer discriminates on the basis of gender, religion, age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.

With the baby boomers coming of age, the next hot area for employment lawyers in Maryland is going to be age discrimination. Between 1997 and 2003, age discrimination plaintiffs recovered $262,405 from juries, more than did any other protected group, according to Employment Practices Liability: Jury Trends and Statistics, a study conducted by Jury Verdict Research.