Sure, I know you probably want to read about the NLRB’s decision this week questioning the legality of confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses in severance agreements for employees who aren’t supervisors. We’ll have more on that soon. (For now, Jon Hyman’s summary is a worthy substitute.)

But in the meantime, I wanted to highlight something

Over the last several months, I’ve been asked to do far more sexual harassment prevention trainings than typical and the issue of profanity in the workplace has popped up.

No doubt that much of this is due to the recent spate of cases of very public sexual harassment and assault cases (Thank You Matt

In yesterday’s post, my colleague Chris Engler discussed the “wilful” misconduct standard and how it applies when your employee is otherwise eligible to receive unemployment compensation.

Today, Chris returns and has a quick quiz to review some recent cases of how this standard has been applied.

So, you think you know what the “wilful” misconduct

A case out of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (of which, Connecticut is part of) addresses an interesting question:

When a jury  finds that sexual harassment has been perpetuated by a single employee, is injunctive (non-monetary) relief required to be issued by the District Court?

The EEOC argued yes and argued that remedies such as preventing the harassing employee from returning to the workplace were appropriate. 

Um, there’s a problem in Aisle 3.

The Second Circuit agreed in part, saying that ordinarily a termination of a lone harasser should be enough. But the court said that given the egrigious facts of this particular case, something more should’ve been done to protect the female employees from potential future harassment.

The case, EEOC v. KarenKim, Inc. (d/b/a Paul’s Big M Grocery), can be downloaded here. 

There’s a lot of facts to the case, but this summary, by the Outten & Golden Employment Law Blog, captures some of the salient points:

KarenKim is a grocery store whose employees largely consist of teenage female employees. The company is owned and managed by Karen Connors. In 2001, she hired Allen Manwaring as the store manager. In 2006, Connors and Manwaring became romantically involved and had a son together.

At trial, a number of current and former employees testified about Manwaring’s sexual harassment of the female employees, which consisted of verbal and physical harassment. Some of his verbal comments included making comments of a sexual nature to employees and compliments about parts of their body. He told one employee that if he was her boyfriend, he would never “let her out of his sheets” and that “if he was 10 years younger, he would be on top of her.” He also physically harassed the women by touching and massaging them in inappropriate ways and on a daily basis. He would brush up against them to deliberately touch their breasts, put his crotch against their buttocks, breath on their necks, hug them, and squeeze their hips.

Oy.Continue Reading What Remedy Is Appropriate When a Jury Concludes Sexual Harassment Occurred?

It’s so rare nowadays that the Connecticut Supreme Court rules on discrimination cases that, when I first took a look at its new decision in Duart v. Department of Corrections (download here) — officially released next week — I got excited.  After all, the case is based on a claims of gender, race and sexual

As cases go, Smith v. Connecticut (D. Conn., Jan. 9, 2008) (Bryant, J.) will not rank up there in the annals of legal history.  Hartford Correctional Center from the air(Even the name of the case sounds generic.)  Moreover, when you read the facts, the case doesn’t scream "precedent".  The Smith case, however, reinforces the notion that consistently applied disciplinary policies are