National Clothesline

When I graduated from law school, I thought I wanted to be a corporate lawyer.

I had visions of negotiating mergers and acquisitions, but I ended up in the labor department of a large Baltimore firm. Before long, I was a management labor lawyer and a litigator. I even branched into OSHA work.

Over the years, I have had a lot of bizarre cases. Just when I think I have heard it all, a client comes up with a situation that sounds as though it was created by a Hollywood writer.

One of my trade association clients in the construction industry has asked me to do a seminar before its regular membership meeting, and then give the dinner speech at that meeting. To spice it up, I told them my topic at dinner would be “my most unusual cases.” This month’s column is a partial written version of that speech.

“But he stabbed somebody.”

Just this year, a client called with a question about the implications of keeping a long-term employee who had stabbed another employee in the warehouse. The client wanted to keep the employee because he did a good job, was always on time, and did not miss much work.

The stabbing was the first disciplinary offense. I asked how the victim might feel about that, and the client said he probably would not like it. The more I reminded them that this employee had stabbed somebody, the more they became convinced that firing him was their only choice. Who says employers are always looking for reasons to fire employees?

“But how did the poop get there?

My very first OSHA case involved, among other things, the sanitary conditions of a plant’s bathroom. The inspector claimed there was excrement on the toilets, and I was trying to establish if he knew how long the condition had existed.

It seemed a good idea to establish (1) how poop gets into the bathroom and (2) that it can be difficult to tell whether it was deposited there recently.

I guess because he thought I was doing lawyer tricks, he absolutely refused to admit that people using the toilet caused the mess. At least he admitted that it was unlikely that it was carried in by elves or appeared there by magic.

“I wouldn’t sexually harass her. I’m a grandfather and happily married man.”

The branch manager of a real estate company was accused of inviting a female employee to visit him in his hotel room. The manager lived in another state, and he spent much of the week in a hotel near the office.

I was absolutely convinced that he was innocent until the ride over to the EEOC fact-finding conference. On the way, he still insisted that he had not harassed the complainant, but confessed that he was having an affair with another employee in the office. Grandpa was a snake. We settled.

“You want to fire your mother and father?”

There are too many stories to tell about family-owned businesses. I’ve had people want to fire their parents, grandparents, children, brothers, sisters, and in-laws.

In one instance, the plant manager’s brother was leading the effort to unionize his brother’s plant. I now understand the Civil War a little better, and the movie War of the Roses does not seem as farfetched as I originally thought it was.

“What did you do with the vegetables? Please tell me you threw them out.”

I have represented companies dealing with food, and employees find the most unusual uses for produce, meat, and liquids. I understand that people can get bored stacking crates of grapefruit, cucumbers, and brussel sprouts, but “jeez.”

Fortunately, once those employees are fired, they are normally — did I say normally — too embarrassed to file charges. Nevertheless, there’s a lawyer out there who would argue that this is disability discrimination based on mental illness. We need to accommodate people and their strange obsessions with food.

“John, how much do you weigh?”

During an OSHA inspection, the government compliance officer asked the foreman if he had tested the safety net on a building under construction by dropping a 150-pound weight into it. He said “wait a minute,” asked an employee two floors above the net how much he weighed, and when he said “180,” he told him to jump into the net. He did. Net tested.

“Can you identify Mr. Jones in this courtroom?”

I was cross examining a witness who claimed his supervisor had said improper things, suggesting discrimination, when he fired him.

I suspected the witness did not remember what the supervisor looked like, so I asked him if the supervisor was in the courtroom. At the same time, I was looking at a person I knew was not the supervisor. He took the bait and identified the wrong guy. Case dismissed.

There are many more stories about incompetence, stupidity, mental illness, and sexual escapades, but I need to save them for future speeches.

Let me close with one of the last times where I represented an employee, not an employer. This man was fired as a supervisor at a state transit agency, allegedly for being a racist.

I told him I would take the case if he could produce any evidence showing that he was not racist (yes, I was brushing him off). He came back in the afternoon with three African-American employees he had promoted and his black secretary, who invited him to her wedding.

At the hearing, the State called a white coworker who testified that my guy, who owned a couple of rental houses, told him he would not own a house in Baltimore City because he would not rent to blacks.

My client coincidentally owned the property next to the house where he lived, which he rented out. I called his tenant/next-door neighbor to testify.

Yep, he was African American. Sometimes, the good guys win, even employees.