Jury Awards $1.7M to Woman Spanked on Job

[Haole Girl]

Jury Awards $1.7M to Woman Spanked on Job

By JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press Writer
40 minutes ago

FRESNO, Calif. - A jury awarded $1.7 million Friday to a woman who was spanked in front of her colleagues in what her employer called a camaraderie-building exercise.

The jury of six men and six women found that Janet Orlando, 53, was subjected to sexual harassment and sexual battery when she was paddled on the rear end two years ago at Alarm One Inc., a home security company in Fresno. The jury said Orlando did not suffer from sexual assault, as she had alleged.

Jurors awarded Orlando $10,000 for economic loss, $40,000 for future medical costs and $450,000 for emotional distress, pain and suffering. They awarded her an additional $1.2 million in punitive damages.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060429/ap_on_re_us/spanking_trial

[Poll_Blind]

1. Now _THAT_ is a SPANKING! Woo-hoo! n/t

PB

[Haole Girl]

2. Yes it is

:spank:

[lostinacause]

3. $40K for medical costs, $450 for emotional distress

This is insane. With these kinds of payoffs I wonder how many people actually seek out these situations.

[havocmom]

4. The insanity was on the part of her bosses who seemed to be looking

for some sort of cover for their kinky kicks. Diapers and spankings are NOT motivators nor are they team builders.

[lostinacause]

5. Look at the last line of the artical.

She was suing to make money. I am willing to bet she participated in the activity because she knew that there would be financial reward for doing so. She doesn't deserve a penny. If you willingly victimize yourself for financial reward you deserve what you get.

[REP]

She Was Participating Because She Wanted To Keep Her Job

These assinine "team-building" stunts are all the rage with moron middle managers. Employees, especially salespeople, don't get to pick and choose which activity they participate in; they participate or get fired.

[lostinacause]

11. So you believe someone who has sued an employer in the past

for a similar thing is just unlucky. I don't buy that.

Regardless the person making the decision probably just lost his job. Ridiculous settlements like this do little to ensure the right decisions. They just line the pockets of those who, often willingly, get into these situations. This also has some negative spillover effects on the ability for honest people to find jobs and get good salaries as it raises the expected cost of employment for the employer enhancing problems with outsourcing. There are ways to deal with these problems such as criminal charges and holding the individual responsible that are much more effective and don’t hurt the rest of the workforce.

[havocmom]

25. There are a LOT of idiot middle managers out there

And in sales/marketing, you either do what they say for their rah-rah shit or 'you are NOT a team player' and that is considered for every interaction you have with management for the rest of your career. That makes it especially difficult for the women is what is still sort of considered a last bastion of the 'good ol boys' in business in many areas.

If she has sued in the past, she has been abused in the past and good on her for standing up and making the idiots re-think their programs!

A lot more people have just taken this shit and said nothing, but it does affect them in a negative way and for many, it finally makes them leave lucrative careers. And, gee, decent people leaving a field would leave a higher percentage of 'win at any cost' types and that leads to consumers losing in the end. Those people with boundaries and understanding there are decent limits are the sort we need in ALL businesses. They are the fertile field from which spring whistle blowers and that is what alerts all of us to the bad shit going down in many industries.

[rpannier]

24. Thanks for the Info on Cats

I just donated

[Maddy McCall]

9. And she got $1.7 mil.

Which she deserved.

[lostinacause]

13. Consider someone who looks for households that have icy

sidewalks in the winter and walks on them in a reckless manner until they slip on them and then sue the homeowner for about thousands of times the real damages they sustained. Do they deserve the money?

[havocmom]

26. Deliberately visiting people with icy stoops not same as going to work!

:eyes:

[Oeditpus Rex]

14. She hasn't gotten anything yet

"Jury awards" headlines are among the most misleading in journalism. Judges can — and often do — reduce the amount "awarded" by juries, which is not legally binding.

If memory serves, the woman who sued McDonald's Corp. in the infamous "hot coffee" incident actually received about 1/10 of what the jury awarded.

[lostinacause]

21. So you are saying being in an embarrising situation is worth

over 30 years worth of income? I would be happy to do something like that, so long as there is no record of it, for $17000.

[Haole Girl]

10. Having had many an insane boss, I'd have to disagree with you

...the company deserved what they got here. I hope others will take note. More than likely, though, California will simply become a "Right to Work" state someday. Which, in reality, means a person can be fired for any reason or no reason at all.

[Kagemusha]

12. I did a double take at the 40k for medical at first.

But I guess that's for psychiatry. Not... flat out insane, and shrinks cost money, but the jury's probably making a reach there.

Certainly the company deserved punishment, but whether the woman herself deserved rewards to this extent is, I think, debatable. Just well, what's done is done, so there's not much point debating it anyway.

[lostinacause]

17. Others will take note but in a different way then you would expect.

They will see that hiring people is more risky. People will also take note and put themselves in riskier situations. Through a whole bunch of economic reasoning I don't care to mention the end result would be: an increased number a lawsuits, a slight increase in the amount of effort spent monitoring managers, an increase in the prices people face and a decrease in employment (potentially due to outsourcing.) The only positive thing coming out of this is the increase in the amount of effort spent monitoring managers and compared to the loss of employment and higher prices this is minor in my opinion.

[sandnsea]

20. bawk bawk bawk

Everybody should sit around scared shitless because the big bad corporation might take away their $5.00 an hour job.

It's that kind of thinking that has allowed the corporations to take all the jobs overseas in the first place. If we'd all stand up for labor rights, all over the world, then there wouldn't be a benefit in them leaving.

You either have to have government regulation or punitive damages. Business will not do the right thing and have proven it over and over again. Unbridled capitalism doesn't work. The business deserves to be punished and they were. This woman stands up for herself and good for her, somebody hsa to.

[lostinacause]

22. There is a huge difference between unbridled capitalism and what any

reasonable person would implement. There is also a huge difference between public policy such as this and public policy that actually solves the problems at hand.

If you want to see effective workers rights situations without punitive damages look north. Canada is also doing much better with outsourcing issues. There is essentially no meaningful debate about free trade in Canada while in America the “champions of trade” (many Republicans) are upset with the results. While there are many reasons for this by and large the attitudes towards wealth, work and education are a major part of the problem.

The goal of any policy is to align the interests of the parties in question with those of society. Given the previously mentioned outcomes these goals are not being accomplished. The manager, the one making the decision, is being under punished and the “victim” is being over rewarded whether she is a victim or not.

[sandnsea]

23. Regulation or punitive damages

Has to be one or the other. Business alternately argues against both, using the exact same arguments you're using for either one. A free market system uses punitive damages. If America wants the free market system, then that's part of the deal. If America is willing to accept regulation, then we can put reductions on punitives, (which judges do in the end anyway). As it is, we're losing both measures of accountability and losing them rapidly. What Canada does isn't particularly relevant because, rightly or wrongly, not many people in this county look to Canada for economic solutions. These are just realities.

[pitohui]

15. how do you seek it out? SHE WAS AT WORK

she was at frigging work for god's sake, she did nothing to seek this out

she won't get a fraction of the money anyway, they'll have to settle for much less or the company in question will just appeal appeal appeal for another decade or two

[lostinacause]

19. She could have not tried to avoid the situation. She could have been a

rabid flirt. In fact the best way to get into a sexual harassment situation is to flirt as flirting is typically returned.

It always amazes me the things people will do to cheat others out of money. I once knew of someone who intentionally got into car "accidents" by failing to avoid and sometimes perusing situations that were dangerous. There are certain people who are very good at finding a way to profit at the expense of others.

[havocmom]

28. "Could have..." Gee, ya think maybe the company's lawyers thought of that

The case was tried before a jury. Stands to reason the company's attorneys used every trick they could to credibly discredit the woman. If the jury found for her anyway, well, you can try her here all you want, and it matters not one whit.

[niyad]

30. what a load of sexist BS. "rabid flirt" ? and all the other animus you

direct against this person you do not even KNOW, presuming to KNOW what was in her mind, rationalizing and projecting. Makes one wonder what is in YOUR past that makes you so unbelievably defensive. although, looking at your screen name, one might almost make a guess. not once have you addressed the utter insanity of a company thinking that this sort of disgusting treatment is: a; within their rights as employers, and b; that it actually does anything productive.

whatever situation has caused you to appear to be such a hateful and judgmental person must have been quite something. the question is, how were YOU to blame for it?

[Neil Lisst]

6. Not surprised. Not surprised at all.

I had figured it to be about a million dollar case.

Nice work.

[Maddy McCall]

7. Good.

[SeattleGirl]

8. Wow! That's great!

Maybe, just maybe, some of these "team leaders" will have second thoughts about humiliating people as a way to "build" the team.

[pitohui]

16. the motive is not to build any team, it is nonconsenting S/M

there are many people who get pleasure from giving and getting spankings, this is sexual abuse, make no mistake, the manager who dreamed up this plan masturbated many a night at the thought of what he made his employees do

[Hekate]

18. The whole baby food, diapers, mockery, spankings thing -- ick

A person goes to work to perform a job and be paid for rendering a service and/or producing a product, not this kind of crap.

There are all sorts of excuses offered for why women and men should have to put up with bullying and demeaning behavior. I'll bet this woman was told more than once that she has no sense of humor and is not a team player. Nonsense. This wasn't funny, and the team they were building was one consisting of sado-masochists.

Hekate

[Haole Girl]

27. I certainly never thought about it that way

but you could be right. Yikes, what a scary thought.

[havocmom]

29. That and it weeds out many people with boundaries and limits

Leaving behind a group that has 'Winning at any cost' as a creed. Gee, think that might have anything to do with the condition America finds its self? In these days of corporate takeover, are we better off that we were before many bosses in companies understood that there were moral limits on what should be done to people?

[Clark2008]

31. Look at this paragraph:

Lawyers for Alarm One, an Anaheim-based, 300-employee company, said the spankings were not discriminatory because they were given to both male and female workers and that Orlando and others willingly took part.

Like males can't be sexually harrassed? The lawsuit wasn't about "discrimination," per se. It was about being sexually harrassed and assaulted.

Do these idiots at Alarm One REALLY think it's OK to paddle adults? Heck, teachers can't even paddle children at school without parental permission and there is a whole argument about whether even paddling children is worthwhile and/or moral, yet these braintrusts at Alarm One think it's OK to do it to adults?

What morans! :eyes: