7 Mistakes You Can Avoid with Email Harassment Cases

In its landmark 7-2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers are responsible for harassment — even if they are not aware that it is going on. Specifically, employers may be held liable if the employer “should have known of the conduct and fails to take immediate and appropriate corrective action.” (Burlington Industries v. Ellerth and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton)

The “should have known” standard is particularly troublesome when harassment involves email. How can a company know about every email message from its employees when thousands of messages are sent every day? Which messages should the company know about?

The liability for not knowing about email harassment can be substantial. While most harassment cases are settled out of court with a confidential result, a few well-known cases that centered on email show the size of risk to business:

		Congressman Mark Foley of Florida abruptly resigned as the result of emails and instant messages he wrote to a former teenage male page
		Chevron paid $2.2-million to four female employees to settle a lawsuit in which they claimed they were sexually harassed with email jokes.
		Two African American Morgan Stanley employees filed a $60 million racial discrimination lawsuit claiming racist jokes were disseminated via email. The case was settled for an undisclosed sum.

The good news is that the U.S. Supreme Court said that penalties and fines could be lessened if the companies exercised “reasonable care” to prevent and correct harassment. (Burlington Industries v. Ellerth and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton)

Many harassment suits are now focused on whether companies exercised “reasonable care.” Many companies compound their risk by the mistakes they make when handling email. Fortunately, there are steps that you can take as part of your overall anti-harassment program that may help.

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By Roger Matus, Chief Executive, Sean True, Chief Technology and Chuck Ingold, Principal Research Engineer, InBoxer, Inc.

By Roger Matus, Chief Executive, Sean True, Chief Technology
and Chuck Ingold, Principal Research Engineer, InBoxer, Inc.