dental assistant looses case for being too sexy

[Guest121613]

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs...opstories.html

it is so bizarre, what is wrong with this dentist, and seems like the courts are wrong. where are the pics?

Hey for those that pain fetishs, she should open a practice, and use those sharp metal objects in new ways...

quote from article
"Soon after, Knight's wife, Jeanne, who also works at the practice, found out about the text messaging and ordered her husband to fire Nelson."

the guys wife works are the practice, and he is texting the hygienist asking if she has orgasms?

will this mean a trend of young ladies dressing conservatively instead of like daisy duke? may it never happen

but yet is travesty

[Guest121613]

i just realized, this thread should be in the sandbox sections, mods please move, my apologies

[Chica Chaser]

No problem, moved

[Chica Chaser]

Damn wives, no sense of humor about these things....glad I don't have one anymore!

[CuteOldGuy]

Employers can fire anyone at anytime, unless protected by the EEOC. Last I heard, "being sexy" is not a protected class. Who was the dipshit lawyer that took this stupid case? I hope he got his fee up front.

[Chica Chaser]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

Employers can fire anyone at anytime, unless protected by the EEOC. Last I heard, "being sexy" is not a protected class. Who was the dipshit lawyer that took this stupid case? I hope he got his fee up front.

Correct, most states, including Iowa, are "At-will employment" states.

An at-will employee can be fired at any time, for any reason (except for a few illegal reasons). If the employer decides to let you go, that's the end of your job--and you have very limited legal rights to fight your termination.
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encycloped...ion-30022.html

[Fast Gunn]

An employer does has a legal right to terminate an employee for non-performance.

However, firing an employee because she's "too sexy" after many years of work is plain wrong.

If that was true, why hire her in the first place?

. . . The sonofabitch fired her because she wouldn't put out!

[wellendowed1911]

Originally Posted by Chica Chaser

Correct, most states, including Iowa, are "At-will employment" states.

An at-will employee can be fired at any time, for any reason (except for a few illegal reasons). If the employer decides to let you go, that's the end of your job--and you have very limited legal rights to fight your termination.
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encycloped...ion-30022.html

chica my State (Texas) is an at will state which I think is a little different than a right to work which many times people mix up, but I was told by someone in HR that it's not that cut and dry - for example if would be difficult to terminate John Doe by just saying we don't need you anymore that there has to be some sort of paper trail- ex poor performance, tardiness, etc that is required before you can terminate someone- that's what I been told.

[Chica Chaser]

There is a big difference between "right to work" and "at will employment". Mostly centered around union shops with "right to work". Thats a different topic as its not what is going on here.

There are some legal loopholes but in general terms its not difficult to terminate anyone, with or without a paper trail. Look at the big companies currently doing mass layoffs. Navistar and Cummins Engine are two big ones I am very familiar with. They simply call it a "workforce reduction" and its done.

Here are 600 hundred jobs down the tube right there in the Metroplex http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/bl...result-in.html

And 1500 Cummins workers out http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/c...workers-40137/

[Chica Chaser]

Originally Posted by Fast Gunn

[COLOR=Blue]An employer does has a legal right to terminate an employee for non-performance.

However, firing an employee because she's "too sexy" after many years of work is plain wrong.[/COLOR=Red]

Wrong or not, its legal and that is really all that matters in the eyes of the law. If the Doc's wife wanted her canned, he's well within his rights to do it. It might speak to the size of his gonads, but legally he can do it.

Originally Posted by Fast Gunn

If that was true, why hire her in the first place?

. . . The sonofabitch fired her because she wouldn't put out!

And THAT would be illegal to fire her for. From what I read so far, she has already fought the termination in court, and lost. If there was some merit to the fact she wouldn't put out, she would have fought it on those grounds and won BIG. Courts love a good sexual harassment case

[wellendowed1911]

Originally Posted by Chica Chaser

There is a big difference between "right to work" and "at will employment". Mostly centered around union shops with "right to work". Thats a different topic as its not what is going on here.

There are some legal loopholes but in general terms its not difficult to terminate anyone, with or without a paper trail. Look at the big companies currently doing mass layoffs. Navistar and Cummins Engine are two big ones I am very familiar with. They simply call it a "workforce reduction" and its done.

Here are 600 hundred jobs down the tube right there in the Metroplex http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/bl...result-in.html

And 1500 Cummins workers out http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/c...workers-40137/

CC layoffs due to a plant closing is a different situation- but if business is good and the company wasn't doing any layoffs can they simply tell John Doe- let's say he's been working there for 10 years that we simply don't need you anymore???

What I was told is that John Doe can ask for the reason of his "termination"- what if the company employed 100 people but only decided to let John Doe go- from what I was told from an HR rep is that the company would have to something on record: tardiness, missed days, abandonment of job, violating company policy before they could dismiss him.

Now I could be wrong, but I work as a "pharmacist" and a few years ago there was a Pharmacist who was having bad metrics, customer complaints- etc- but as bad as they wanted to terminate him on the spot- the company had to document that they informed him of company policies that he was not achieving, had a written out and documented time period for the employee(pharmacist) to fix the problems- before they could terminate him- in other words they couldn't just walk in and say hey won't don't need you anymore.....

[awl4knot]

She was fired because of her physical attributes, and that's gender discrimination. The husband is the employer, not the wife. The wife can't decide who is hired and fired, If the wife said fire her because she was black or Jewish would the dip-shit husband be exonerated for his discrimination? Of course not. But it's okay because wifey is jealous? Cut the crap. It's like firing a guy because he was too good looking and the secretaries were distracted. That's a termination based upon sex, not because he was sexy. (Sorry COG, that's a dum argument. Being "sexy" is based upon sex isn't it?)

If the employer had a dress policy that she violated, that's another story, but that wasn't stated here.

A pussy employer fired a hot woman because his wife objected. That's employment discrimination based upon sex; you can't characterize it any other way.

My wives were hot women. My daughters are smoking hot. To think they could be fired for their looks is appalling. It's illegal and morally unconscionable. The Supreme Court of Kansas are idiots.

[Chica Chaser]

Originally Posted by awl4knot

A pussy employer fired a hot woman because his wife objected. That's employment discrimination based upon sex; you can't characterize it any other way.

I'm not characterizing it in anyway, but the good doc was obviously within his legal right to do so, according to the court. They apparently didn't see it as discrimination.

[Chica Chaser]

Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

CC layoffs due to a plant closing is a different situation- but if business is good and the company wasn't doing any layoffs can they simply tell John Doe- let's say he's been working there for 10 years that we simply don't need you anymore???

What I was told is that John Doe can ask for the reason of his "termination"- what if the company employed 100 people but only decided to let John Doe go- from what I was told from an HR rep is that the company would have to something on record: tardiness, missed days, abandonment of job, violating company policy before they could dismiss him.

Now I could be wrong, but I work as a "pharmacist" and a few years ago there was a Pharmacist who was having bad metrics, customer complaints- etc- but as bad as they wanted to terminate him on the spot- the company had to document that they informed him of company policies that he was not achieving, had a written out and documented time period for the employee(pharmacist) to fix the problems- before they could terminate him- in other words they couldn't just walk in and say hey won't don't need you anymore.....

Not really any different at all, whether its one person or 10,000 people.
I don't think there are many companies that wouldn't go through the proper documentation procedures to terminate someone. And I doubt that most companies are specifically looking to shit-can employees arbitrarily, that not good business and not good for the business.

In your pharmacist scenario above, yes the company COULD have walked in and canned the person on the spot. Its likely they didn't do that and waited with all the documentation/warnings, etc because they are wanting to make sure that they have all bases covered in the event the employee decides to bring a wrongful termination suit. Every company I have worked for does exactly what you describe, but thats to cover their own ass rather than the fact that the can't just terminate someone.

Most companies are scared to death of a wrongful termination lawsuit. Its bad publicity if the media gets a hold of it and its also a legal expense for them to fight it, oftentimes a significant expense for attorneys and legal teams. So they will go through the whole documentation process for that reason.

Originally Posted by wellendowed1911

they couldn't just walk in and say hey won't don't need you anymore.....

So yes they "could", but typically they "don't"

I'll have to research it, but I pretty sure that the Doc here is even less restricted as I'm sure he employs less than 50 people. Small businesses like that are held to an even lower requirement on the "at-will" standards.

[Sidewinder]

Originally Posted by Chica Chaser

There are some legal loopholes but in general terms its not difficult to terminate anyone, with or without a paper trail. Look at the big companies currently doing mass layoffs. Navistar and Cummins Engine are two big ones I am very familiar with. They simply call it a "workforce reduction" and its done.

It isn't quite that cut-and-dried.

I got caught in like the fifth round layoff at Nortel Networks, in 2001. One of the documents they gave me was a list of EVERYONE (not by name) who'd been laid off in that round, broken out by age and ethnicity. The purpose of this was to demonstrate that neither age nor race was the reason for any one particular person being laid off.

There's a reason. If the person being laid off can establish ANY kind of credible claim, as in good enough that his attorney can keep a straight face in court while laying the claim in front of the judge, it will cost the company a HUGE amount of money to defend themselves. If the claim is legit, if it WAS age or race discrimination, the company is TOAST. The penalties they'll get hit with, and the legal costs they'll incur, for laying off that one oldster, or that one protected minority, will eat ALL of the savings they hoped to get from the ENTIRE layoff.

That's for a mass layoff. For a single layoff, the burden is a lot higher. In some industries, in some states, it is literally cheaper to transfer the guy to a holding bin somewhere, and pay his salary and bennies until he retires, and his pension after that, than it is to can him, EVEN IF HE IS BEING TERMINATED FOR CAUSE. (The teacher's unions in California are a particularly nasty example of this. They've got guys marking time in warehouses with SEXUAL ASSAULT OF STUDENTS charges pending against them. The due process requirements are such that many of them will retire, and draw their pension, before the district has jumped through all the hoops required to fire them.)

In the case at hand, if the dentist had been smart about it, BEFORE he'd laid the girl off, he'd've called every other dentist in town, QUIETLY, explained the situation, and set up interviews for her. IDEALLY, he'd have had three potential job offers for her in his hand before he ever called her into his office.