Legal Question in Sexual Harassment in Alabama

Re: manager making sexual comments ,touching and intimidation

Sterling DeRamus pretty much says it all. Have there been other employees at the store who have also suffered sexual harassment PRIOR to the date your daughter was harassed? Perhaps you can show a pattern of ingnoring the situation by upper management and that might give her a cause of action under Georgia state law.

You state the manager "touched her", your daughter can always go to the local city or district court and take out an arrest warrant for harassment (it may be called differently in Georgia). She would need to act fast because the longer she waits the more people in the Court would wonder why.

Randal Ford

Re: manager making sexual comments ,touching and intimidation

You may end up needing a Georgia lawyer in the end. But the law is the same for both jurisdictions. What the store manager did was certainly wrong. The issue though is whether the company can be held accountable. At this stage, it cannot. She has done the right thing by complaining to the market manager. But the company has also done the right thing by investigating it and offering a solution of transfering her to another store. While that might seem unfair, such solutions have been upheld by courts as acceptable. Her alternative is to stick it out and if it continues or she is retaliated against, she might have a lawsuit. Might.

If she stays where she is, her relationship with her manager is ruined and she will likely end up getting terminated a few months down the road. Retaliation after several months can be difficult to prove and you would need some hard evidence that this manager retaliated.

Then the issue would come up as to why she wouldn't take the transfer that the company offered. If the harassment really happened, why would she stay with this guy?

So her best bet, if she wishes to stay with the company, is to accept the transfer.

Sorry, I couldn't be more help. The law isn't always as protective of women who are being harassed as it needs to be. But the company must discriminate against her for her to have a sexual harassment lawsuit. And for that to happen, they must either fail to take action and allow it to continue or they must retaliate against her.

Sterling L. DeRamus

Attorney at Law

Birmingham, Alabama 35203

sderamus @bellsouth.net