Harassment Legal News Articles & Interviews

Manhattan, NY A sexual harassment and retaliation settlement was in the spotlight, this past July. It involved more than 25 construction workers who were subjected to physical assaults and other types of harassment, and some workers were retaliated against after complaining to supervisors. “It’s so important that these women supported and corroborated each other,” says attorney Vincent White.  “It is never okay for someone to harass you at work.”

Santa Cruz, CA: A Santa Cruz County Superior Court jury, after a one-month trial, awarded $2.6 million to a truck driver who was sexually harassed. Of that amount, Beverly Fabrics was ordered to pay $1.1 million punitive damages for sexual harassment, gender discrimination, retaliation and failure to prevent harassment, discrimination and retaliation, according to court documents. Cole Hudson filed the California labor lawsuit after several years of harassment and bullying—with sexual innuendos— by a fellow truck driver.

Vancouver, BC: It’s not the demands of the job, but their fellow male officers that have pushed dozens, if not hundreds, of women in Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to the breaking point says lawyer Alexander Zaitzeff, who represents dozens of female Mounties in a massive class-action gender discrimination suit against the iconic Canadian police force, whose red scarlet tunic is recognized around the world.

Washington, DC Plaintiffs seeking compensation from Wal-Mart for alleged sex discrimination in hiring and promotion will have to wage their battles individually, after the US Supreme Court ruled this morning that a class-action lawsuit against the giant retailer can't go ahead.

Swansea, IL As the firm's Web site says, Cates Law was built on the reputation of attorney Judy Cates—and no wonder. Cates and co-attorney Benedict Morelli, brought in from New York by Cates to help during the trial, recently won a landmark $95 million in a sexual harassment suit. Their client was a 20-year-old woman who endured a year of lewd behavior, unwanted sexual touching and was finally sexually assaulted by her manager at Aaron Rents, a rent-to-own retailer in southern Illinois.

Woodland Hills, CA It was not your average harassment complaint that 25-year-old Kyme Dang brought to attorney Neil Sunkin in 2007. But after four years of working on her behalf and some good old-fashioned "lawyering," as Sunkin calls it, the court ordered former boyfriend, Barry Hankerson, to pay Dang $3,335,861 in damages caused by a long and repeated pattern of stalking, defamation and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Des Moines, IA There is no place in the workplace for workplace harassment. Ever since the advent of equal rights, women's rights and gender equality, what was once a novel (and at one time, accepted!) response to an increasing number of women working alongside men in the workplace, has quite properly become a stigma no longer tolerated in the workplace of 2010 and beyond.

Detroit, MI It is hard to say what may happen in the future when it comes to litigating against bullying. "The law the way it is written doesn't provide a solution for every kind of harassment," says attorney Richard Winslow. "The way the law is written it is quite narrow, but I think the issues are broader than Title lX, which is limited to sexual harassment."

Chicago, IL Attorney Robb Stokar does a lot of workplace discrimination cases in his Chicago practice and he is never really very surprised by the kinds of things people endure. "People come to me with their workplace complaints on a daily basis," says Stokar. "There are daily workplace transgressions in this country. Some are reported and others are not."

O'Fallon, MO A workplace harassment case alleging sexual harassment appears to have been settled with an agreement by the defendant in the case to pay $55,000. According to a 7/6/10 statement, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) brought the lawsuit after a failed initial attempt to reach a voluntary settlement through conciliation.