6th Circuit: No RICO claim due to employers’ alleged scheming to deny workers’ comp benefits

The Sixth Circuit has held that RICO provides no remedy for alleged racketeering associated with the (alleged) denials of workers’ compensation benefits. Click here to read the opinion

6th Circuit Rejects Company’s Sexual Harassment Policy

An interesting new decision from the 6th Circuit today, reversing a grant of summary judgment in a sexual harassment lawsuit. The District Court had granted summary judgment on the basis of the Faragher/Ellerth defense, due to the company’s sexual harassment complaint procedure and the company’s response to the employee’s complaint.

The 6th Circuit first attacked the policy:

We question whether FCIS’s Anti-Harassment Policy facially satisfies all of the requirements of an effective policy… . While the policy allows employees to make “reports” of harassment, it does not inform employees that their complaints may be informal and need not be placed in a formal writing. And while the language requiring a report to “management or Human Resources” conceivably permits employees to report harassing behavior of a supervisor to a higher level of management or to Human Resources, the policy does not expressly instruct the employees on any particular mechanism to bypass a harassing supervisor when making a complaint of harassment.

Then, the 6th Circuit criticized the company’s handling of the employee’s complaint because the company had merely smacked the alleged harasser with a disciplinary warning, but “produced no evidence that it took steps to monitor [his] conduct after receiving [the employee’s] complaint or after disciplining [the harasser]…”

The case, which is fascinating, is Shields v. Federal Express Customer Information Services, Inc.