Articles Posted in Uncategorized

On April 4, 2010, Maine United States District Court Judge John A. Woodcock, Jr. concluded that claims of age discrimination in hiring brought by plaintiff Glenn Duckworth in connection with the failure of Mid State Machine to hire Duckworth in 2005 for an open position were timely even though the Plaintiff did not file a Charge with the Maine Human Rights Commission and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission until over three years after the alleged discrimination and did not file his claim in court until almost four years after the alleged discrimination. The case is reported as Duckworth v. Mid-State Machine Products, — F.Supp.2d —-, 2010 WL 1348245 (D.Me. 2010)

In this case, Mr. Duckworth had worked for Mid State Machine (“MSM”) for over six years from 1995 to 2002. For most of this time, Mr. Duckworth worked as the facilities’ gage control technician. In 2002, Duckworth was laid off in a company wide reduction in force. The layoff had nothing to do with Duckworth’s performance and performance evaluations documenting Duckworth’s performance during his employment with MSM indicated that he had performed the duties of his job well. In 2005, Duckworth was seeking work and so called MSM to see if they were hiring. Duckworth spoke with four different managers at MSM on five occasions and during these conversations indicated that he was interested in returning to work for MSM if they were hiring. Duckworth also provided MSM with a copy of his resume.

In fact, during this time in 2005, MSM was seeking to fill Duckworth’s old gage control technician position. MSM’s managers did not mention to Duckworth that the gage control technician position was open. MSM’s hiring manager was made aware of Duckworth’s interest in returning to work for MSM and claims that he initially considered Duckworth for the position but subsequently decided to hire a much younger and less experienced candidate instead of Duckworth. The reasons giving by MSM’s manager for hiring the much younger and inexperienced candidate over Duckworth are in dispute and Duckworth alleges that the reasons given by MSM for their failure to hire him are untrue and pretexts.

On December 19, 2009, President Obama signed the Defense Appropriations bill into law. The bill included an amendment added by Minnesota Senator Al Franken and referred to as the “Franken Amendment” that precludes employers who enter into contracts with the Department of Defense from entering into pre-dispute “agreements” with their employees that require the employee to give up their right to pursue harassment and discrimination claims under Title VII in court in favor of private binding arbitration. The new law also prevents defense contractors from enforcing already existing pre-dispute arbitration agreements.

The amendment was prompted by the gang rape of a KBR/Halliburton employee in Iraq by her coworkers. When the employee attempted to pursue a claim against her employer in court the employer, KBR, kept her claim out of court by using a fine print agreement that it had required her to sign when she started work with KBR waiving her right to a jury trial and instead agreeing to submit all claims against KBR to a private and confidential arbitration run by KBR.

The KBR case reflects a growing trend as more and more employers have come to require their employees to sign away their right to pursue civil rights claims in court as a condition of their employment.