• Thank you for all your help on [AW's] case. Without you, nothing would have come from it. We will be sending people your way. We hope that we will not need your help again, but if we do you will be hearing from us.”

    - J.W., East Machias.

  • We appreciate everything you have done for us. You made this whole process much easier on [P.C.] and me. Words cannot express our gratitude.”

    - K.C., Sanford.

  • Thank you for your efforts and hard work in resolving my case. Your leadership and initiatives were outstanding. I felt truly represented, respected and was treated with honesty and integrity. We are grateful for a positive result and grateful for the excellent teamwork!”

    - L.D., Portland.

  • I want to thank you and your staff for all you and they did. The professional and compassionate way my case was handled is greatly appreciated. It was a pleasure to do business with your firm and if the need ever arises I will be back in touch. Thank you again.”

    - M.H., Bangor.
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Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts held that a reasonable jury could find that Palmer Fire District Number One, Palmer Water District Number One, and two public officials (collectively “Palmer Fire and Water”) subjected former employee Lisa Koss to a sexually hostile work environment and then retaliated against her when she complained about the sexual harassment she experienced.

Koss alleges that her former supervisor, William Cole, sexually harassed her.  Among other things, he allegedly leered and stared at her in a sexual manner while making comments such as “I wish I had somebody like you at home…baby I could make your head spin.”  He allegedly made other crude sexual comments to her as well, such as when Koss was eating a banana Cole said, with a smirk on his face, “I’ve never seen anybody eat a banana like you before.”  On another occasion, Cole allegedly grabbed Koss’s shirt and tried to look down it to see if she was wearing a bra.  Other instances of sexual harassment occurred in the workplace as well between 2008 and August 2012, when Koss stopped working for Palmer Fire and Water.

Koss complained to Palmer Fire and Water management about Cole’s sexual harassment and she alleges that management retaliated against her because of her complaint.  After Koss filed her sexual harassment complaint, her hours were cut by more than half and she was later fired.

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Last month, the U.S. District Court in New Hampshire ruled that a reasonable jury could determine that Northeast Utilities Service Company (NUSCO) discriminated against former employee Judith Janusz because of her age.  In particular, the court found that a reasonable jury could conclude that NUSCO subjected Janusz to an unlawful age-based hostile work environment and fired her because of her age.

Janusz began working for Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH) in 1996 as a customer service representative.  She, along with all of PSNH’s other call center employees, began to work for NUSCO in 2007.  When NUSCO fired Janusz in 2010, she was in her early 60’s.

Janusz says that she started to hear people make ageist comments about her after she came under the supervision of Lori Levesque in or around 2005.  She claims that Levesque and another supervisor, David Slater, would say things to her like “are you going senile,” “I can’t believe at your age you work all these hours,” and “for someone your age, you do a lot.”  According to Janusz, if she hesitated to answer a question, Slater and another supervisor, Gary Cronin, would say things like “tough to get old.”

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Yesterday in Bangor, a jury held that Regis Corporation violated Maine’s Whistleblower Protection Act when it retaliated against former employee Valerie Peasley.  Regis operates hair salons nationwide and Ms. Peasley worked at one of Regis’s salons in Bangor.  Attorneys Peter Thompson and Chad Hansen, of the Maine Employee Rights Group, represented Ms. Peasley at trial.

Regis terminated Ms. Peasley because she reported to the company that some employees at her salon were using and selling illegal drugs in the workplace.  The jury awarded Ms. Peasley $40,000 in compensatory damages and $80,000 in punitive damages.

Ms. Peasley worked for Regis for more than a decade.  After she and another employee reported the illegal drug activity to Regis, they were labeled “narcs” at work.  The people who engaged in the illegal drug activity and a manager at the salon were friends.  Just three weeks after Ms. Peasley reported the illegal drug activity, Regis fired her.

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Last week, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in Chicago, affirmed a trial court’s holding that two United Airlines contractors, Trans States Airlines and GoJet Airlines, jointly employed former employee Darren Cuff under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).

The FMLA requires covered employers to provide medical leave to eligible employees.  The FMLA does not cover employers who have fewer than 50 employees.  Trans States and GoJet argued that Cuff only worked for Trans States and, as such, he was not entitled to FMLA leave because Trans States had less than 50 employees.  However, according to regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Labor, when two employers jointly employ an employee, the total number of employees who work for both employers must be counted to determine FMLA coverage.

The court held that Trans States and GoJet jointly employed Cuff and, thus, Cuff was entitled to FMLA leave because Trans States and GoJet, together, employed over 350 employees.  Cuff was the Regional Manager for both Trans States and GoJet.  He represented both companies in dealings with United Airlines as well as O’Hare Airport, in Chicago.  His business card contained the logos of both Trans States and GoJet.  Cuff’s supervisor notified United and other airlines in 2008 that, “[e]ffective immediately, Darren Cuff, Regional Manager, Trans States Holdings, Inc. [sic: his official employer was Trans States Airlines] will be your go to person if there are any operational issues or concerns with Trans States or GoJet Airlines flights operating in and out of your cities.”

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Under both Maine and federal law, employers in Maine must provide a disabled employee with “reasonable accommodations” if the disabled employee needs an accommodation to do her job.  One of the tricky things about getting a reasonable accommodation is that sometimes accommodations that seem reasonable to one person seem like an “undue hardship” to another; and an employer does not have to provide an accommodation that amounts to an “undue hardship.”

Because it is sometimes difficult to determine what accommodation would be reasonable for a disabled employee, courts have held that employers and employees should engage in an “interactive process” to determine how the employer can accommodate an employee’s disability without undue hardship.  This interactive process is typically initiated when an employee tells his employer that he is having difficulty doing his work because of a disability and he wants to talk about accommodations that would address the problem.  At that point, the employer and employee should talk through what accommodations would and would not work for them.

If you need an accommodation for a disability and you want to learn about potential accommodations that might help you, you should consult the Job Accommodation Network (JAN).  JAN runs a website where you can search for various types of disabilities and learn valuable information about different ways employers can accommodate those disabilities.  For instance, if you search JAN for “hearing loss,” you’ll find, among other things, ideas for accommodating an employee who has difficulty communicating in groups because he cannot hear well.  These ideas include setting rules for meetings, like allowing only one person to talk at a time, or taking minutes of the meeting that can be shared afterwards to ensure that the disabled employee did not miss something that was said.

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Tatsha Robertson, a former Senior Editor for People magazine, has sued People and its parent company, Time, Inc., for race discrimination.  Robertson, who is African American, alleges that People Magazine laid her off because of her race.

According to Robertson’s lawsuit, “behind the cover and pages of People magazine, is a discriminatory organization run entirely by white people who intentionally focus the magazine on stories involving White people and White celebrities.”  The lawsuit goes on to cite examples of stories that People decided not to publish because they did not concern “white middle class suburbia.”  According to the lawsuit, Robertson was the only African American Senior Editor, among eight Senior Editors, at People and the only African American to ever serve in that position in the history of People magazine.  Moreover, she alleges that there were no African Americans in leadership positions above her at People.

Robertson, an award winning editor, began to work for Time at another one of its magazines, Essence.  While Robertson worked at Essence, according to the lawsuit, Essence published multiple stories related to President Obama and First Lady Obama as well as other presidential candidates during the 2008 presidential campaign.  Before this, according to the lawsuit, People had always been recognized for its coverage of the White House and, for that reason, in 2009, Time’s Human Resources department recruited Robertson to move from Essence to People.

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Yesterday, the U.S. District Court of Maine held that Granite Bay Care, Inc., could legally retaliate against an employee who made a mandated report  to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) that the company abused and/or neglected some of its clients.

Granite Bay, based in Portland, provides services to adult clients with cognitive and physical disabilities.  Torrey Harrison worked for Granite Bay as its Training Director from March to December 2010.  During Harrison’s time working for Granite Bay, she filed complaints with DHHS about Granite Bay allegedly neglecting and/or abusing its clients.  For instance, she filed a complaint with DHHS because she believed Granite Bay failed to pay the electricity bill for two of the homes where its disabled clients lived resulting in the electricity being shut off.  Granite Bay subsequently fired Harrison allegedly because she had filed these complaints with DHHS.  Harrison sued Granite Bay under Maine’s Whistleblower Protection Act (MWPA).

Granite Bay argued that it could legally retaliate against Harrison for filing her complaints with DHHS because filing complaints with DHHS was part of her job duties.  The District Court, relying on Winslow v. Aroostook County, a misguided decision of the First Circuit Court of Appeals that we’ve previously discussed, held that since “the job duties of every employee of [Granite Bay] included reporting abuse, neglect, and exploitation to her supervisors and to DHHS,” Granite Bay was free to retaliate against Harrison because she reported the company’s abuse and neglect of its clients to DHHS.

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A new study from the Economic Policy Institute shows that women who work in the food service industry earn significantly less than men.  The pay disparities are most pronounced in some of the restaurant jobs that pay the most—first line supervisors, bartenders, and managers.  Male managers, for instance, earn a median hourly wage that is almost $3.00 per hour more than female managers.  (See Table 5 of the study).

Given the small amount that food service industry workers earn, compared to other occupations, these pay differences can make a huge difference in the lives of the women that they affect because food service industry workers often need every dollar they earn just to survive.

“This is what we identify as pay discrimination,” said Valerie Wilson, with the Economic Policy Institute.  “The work women are doing is being valued at less than the work men do in the same job.”

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Recently, judges from the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, in Chicago, and a judge from the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire have expressed frustration with attorneys for corporate defendants who filed meritless summary judgment motions in employment discrimination cases.  A summary judgment motion asks a judge to dismiss a case before trial.  In employment discrimination cases, a judge may only grant a defendant-employer’s summary judgment motion if s/he finds that no reasonable jury could find in favor of the plaintiff-employee.

In Malin v. Hospira, Inc. et al., the Seventh Circuit reversed a trial court’s decision to grant Hospira’s summary judgment motion.  The plaintiff, Deborah Malin, alleged that Hospira unlawfully demoted her because she (a) complained about sexual harassment, (b) took FMLA leave, or (c) for both reasons.  Malin argued that Hospira retaliated against her when it demoted her in 2006 because of a sexual harassment complaint she made in 2003.  Hospira argued that no reasonable jury could find that it demoted Malin in retaliation for her 2003 complaint because three years separated the complaint and the demotion.  The Seventh Circuit rejected this argument, in part, because of evidence that Hospira had repeatedly retaliated against Malin before the 2006 demotion and, thus, the passage of time could not foreclose her claim.  With respect to Malin’s FMLA leave, Hospira argued that it decided to demote Malin before she requested FMLA leave and, as such, could not have taken her FMLA leave into account when it decided to demote her.  The Seventh Circuit determined that a jury could reasonably find that Hospira had not, in fact, made its final decision to demote Malin before she requested FMLA leave.

At the end of its decision, the Seventh Circuit expressed “disappointment with Hospira’s approach to summary judgment practice, which is such a common part of modern federal civil litigation and especially employment discrimination cases.”  The court noted that “Hospira’s presentation of the evidence amounted to nothing more than selectively quoting deposition language it likes and ignoring deposition language it does not like.”  The court cautioned defendants who engage in these types of “shenanigans” that they could face sanctions for unreasonably prolonging cases with these meritless motions.

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A Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Board of Inquiry recently found that the Black Educators’ Association (BEA), an agency funded by the Nova Scotia Department of Education, discriminated against former employee Rachel Brothers because of her color.  According to Donald C. Murray, who was appointed to hear the case by the Chief Judge of the Provincial Court in Nova Scotia, the BEA fired Ms. Brothers, who is bi-racial, because she was not “black enough” for them.

Mr. Murray found that BEA employees made comments about Ms. Brothers’ relatively light brown skin.  BEA’s executive director also heard these types of comments and did nothing to discourage them.  The BEA ultimately fired Ms. Brothers supposedly due to concerns about the stability of her office.  Those concerns, which Mr. Murray found to be vague and not credible, were brought forward by a subordinate of Ms. Brothers with demonstrated hostility toward Ms. Brothers because of her skin color.

“We take issues of discrimination very seriously at the department,” said Education Minister Karen Casey.  “It is important that the BEA, and every other organization funded by the department, ensure they are respectful and equitable to their employees and clients at all time.  I expect that the BEA will learn from this as they move forward and ensure that they create a workplace where discrimination will not be tolerated.”

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