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JUDICIAL UPDATES Team-Building Exercises: Be Careful of What You Wish For Morale and camaraderie are important features of any successful business. But, as a home security company recently learned, poor judgment in selecting the exercises to build morale and camaraderie can have an expensive price tag. A jury in Fresno Superior Court recently awarded $1.7 million to a saleswoman with Alarm One for sexual harassment and sexual battery. Her claims arose from a series of team-building exercises in which employees were spanked for arriving late or talking out of turn. The employee was paddled on her buttocks for being late to work. This occurred on three separate occasions. She did not complain initially because she needed the money from her job to support her family. However, within one year after starting her position, she quit her job and sued for discrimination, assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. At first, the company claimed that the spankings were not part of company policy and that it had no knowledge of the inappropriate behavior, blaming a few “rogue” supervisors for implementing the exercises. However, the evidence revealed that a company vice president who worked in the same branch as the employee had encouraged the spankings. The company then tried to defend its practice as part of a voluntary program to build camaraderie and motivate employees to increase sales. The jury rejected that justification, awarding the employee $500,000 in compensatory damages, $1 million in punitive, and $200,000 to be paid by three co-workers out of their own pockets. Team-building exercises have laudable goals, but must be carefully crafted. An employer should avoid any exercises that involve humiliation or physical touching that would otherwise be inappropriate.
If you would like to discuss these or
any other employment law matters, please do not hesitate to contact any
member of Klinedinst's Employment
Law Department.
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