Courts' Valuable Advice for Employers - recent labor law cases - Brief Article

1. Sales associate Erika Flores advised Buy Buy Baby, Inc., her employer, that she was pregnant a month before she was fired for alleged deficient job performance and excessive absences. A district court found that her employer's reasons could be pretextual, e.g., Flores was terminated shortly after her pregnancy was known; she had just passed her probationary period; and there was no written evidence of deficient job performance. Flores v. Buy Buy Baby, Inc., SDNY, No.99 Civ. 4792 (10/25/00).

2. An African-American sales manager for A.B. Dick Co. was not advised of an available promotion. The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that he could claim discriminatory refusal to promote under Title VII because the company had no formal mechanism by which the employee could apply for the position. Dews v. A.B. Dick Co., 6th Cir., No. 98-4551 (11/8/00).

3. The Coca-Cola Co. agreed to pay $192.5 million and revamp its human resources policies to settle a class-action race-bias lawsuit. The settlement in part also requires Coca-Cola to send regular diversity reports to its board of directors; consider the company's EEO status as a factor in management bonuses; and create an independent task force with the power to make binding recommendations, investigate and monitor diversity issues, and review how the company pays, promotes, and evaluates African-American employees. Abdallah v. The Coca-Cola Company, ND Ga., No. 1:98-CV-3679 (11/16/00).

Impact: Court cases often provide detailed lessons to other employers that can decrease their exposure to liability.

D. Diane Hatch, Ph.D., is a human resources consultant based in San Francisco. James E. Hall is an attorney with the law firm Barlow, Kobata and Denis, with offices in Los Angeles and Chicago.

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