Lawyer Monthly - October 2021 Edition

How is sexual harassment defined in your jurisdiction, and how can it manifest in the workplace? Sexual harassment in California is the unwanted sexual advance of another that is so severe and pervasive that it permeates the workplace. Traditionally, the typical sexual harassment case has been an older gentleman that hit on a younger female staff member and continued to do so in a harassingmanner. Thosestill exist –however, over the years, the legal landscape for sexual harassment claims has changed. We now see fewer sexual harassment cases than we used to due to California requiring anti- sexual harassment training for employers with more than 50 employees, and due to the media coverage of sexual harassment and sexual assault cases. We now also have same-sex sexual harassment claims. What recourse is available to employees who believe they been subjected to sexual harassment? If an employee is the victim of sexual harassment and he or she makes a complaint, and the company takes an adverse employment action against the employee, the employee would then be able to file a claim. A typical adverse employment action is a wrongful termination, a demotion, or reduction in pay. The employee would be entitled to damages. How should companies respond to complaints of sexual harassment in the workplace? If an employer becomes aware of sexual harassment, they should immediately call a time out, perform an investigation and interview all persons that could potentially be witnesses and determine if sexual harassment did in fact occur. If it did, the company should then take steps to ensure that the bad actor is appropriately punished and potentially terminate the harasser. WWW.LAWYER-MONTHLY.COM | OCT 2021 14 How can a company’s liability best be proven in these cases? Sexual harassment cases are usually cases where you know it when you see it. Some people cannot control their libido and will use their power to attempt to force sexual relations. But you need to have evidence of the sexual harassment and the complaint. Most clients make complaints through email and/or text message. Defendants do not willingly give up evidence and will hide responsive evidence if you allow them. In the Sempra Gas/Porter Ranch gas leak litigation, the defendants have been sanctioned millions of dollars for hiding documents. An LSAT company named Blueprint was sanctioned over one million dollars for discovery abuse and withholding and deleting evidence. What makes you think they would not do the same in your case? To prove these cases, you need documentary evidence – emails or text messages. What is your method for ensuring a client receives due compensation in a sexual harassment lawsuit? We have settled sexual harassment cases for enormous sums, including one at $1.8 million. No stone goes unturned in our cases. Most plaintiff- side employment lawyers work up cases and give up at the end. That is not us, and our results reflect that. In general, companies are very afraid of sexual harassment claims. Alki David, who is a media and Coca-Cola bottling executive, has been ordered to pay over $74,000,000+ in total for sexual harassment claims against him, including a $58,000,000 damages award from a single case in 2019. What defines retaliation, and what are the common signs that an employee is being retaliated against for bringing a complaint of sexual harassment? Retaliation is any form of an adverse employment action taken against the person who made the complaint of sexual harassment. This could be anything that tends to alter the terms of employment in a significant way that harms the employee. Thiscantakeplaceintheformof termination, demotion, suspension, reassignment, moving the employee to a different office further away from their home, or reducing or terminating employment benefits. The general rule of thumb is that the employee needs to be economically harmed in an action taken by the company in response to the complaint. What should employees know about litigating cases of sexual harassment? Employers and their insurance providers will usually be very aggressive in defending claims of sexual harassment. As a result, it is very important that you have all of the evidence of the sexual harassment and are not relying on the defendants to provide it to you. In one of the cases that we prosecuted in 2019, a client’s boss was sending her Snapchat messages of a sexual nature because they would disappear. It wasn’t until she deleted her Snapchat that he started texting the same messages to her through text. Had she only had the knowledge and not evidence of the Snapchat messages, we would not have been able to prevail.