New York Sexual Harassment Lawyer Blog

This month, Anucha Browne Sanders and Madison Square Garden settled Sanders’ sexual harassment suit for $11.5 million. This development comes some two months after Sanders was awarded $11.6 million in punitive damages by a New York federal jury.

Before the settlement, the case was to enter into another damages phase where Judge Gerard E. Lynch was to hear arguments and decide on the outstanding question of Sanders’ compensatory damages, which would include back pay. This additional damages phase would potentially have added millions to the jury’s verdict.

Even though the Sanders case has been settled, Madison Square Garden has not resolved all of the sexual harassment claims made against it. Former New York Rangers cheerleader Courtney Prince filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Madison Square Garden in New York federal court in 2004.

It is unclear what effect Sanders’ trial and subsequent settlement will have on the Prince matter. Sanders’ case may have made it more difficult for the plaintiffs and defendants in the Prince case to arrive at an agreement. In the wake of the $11.5 million settlement, the stakes are considerably higher and Madison Square Garden had previously rejected the recommendation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to settle the matter for about $800,000.

A New York federal jury handed down an $11.6 million verdict in October 2007 in the Isiah Thomas sexual harassment case. On Thursday, December 6, 2007 a California state court jury awarded a former Fresno State women’s basketball coach just over $19 million in damages on her gender discrimination, sexual harassment and retaliation claims.

Many civil verdict awards are comprised of both economic and non-economic components, both of which are sometimes broken down even further. In the case of the Fresno coach, plaintiff Stacy Johnson-Klein’s award broke down into four components: Past economic losses, future economic losses, past non-economic losses and future non-economic losses.

Ms. Johnson-Klein’s past economic losses component of the award ($634,254) covers the period between the coach’s firing in 2005 until the commencement of the trial. Past economic losses typically include lost wages and benefits. Ms. Johnson-Klein’s future economic losses component ($4,440,419) projects the plaintiff’s losses if she had not been fired, and typically includes lost wages and benefits measured from the trial through the plaintiff’s work-life expectancy. This point is usually the plaintiff’s retirement age, typically between age 65 and 70.

The non-economic components are awarded to the plaintiff for pain and suffering that she experienced as a result of the defendant's conduct, independent of economic damages. Ms Johnson-Klein was awarded $3 million for past non-economic losses and $11 million for future non-economic losses. In some cases, the jury may award the plaintiff punitive, or exemplary, damages in order to punish the defendant's willful misconduct which led to the suit. However, in the Johnson-Klein case, there was no punitive damages award against Fresno state because in California, punitive damages may not be recovered by a plaintiff against a defendant that is a public entity.

In October 2007, Dentsu America and its CEO were named as defendants in a sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit, Biegel v. Dentsu Holdings USA, Inc., filed by one of its former creative directors in New York federal court. Plaintiff Steve Biegel alleges, among other things, that while in Tokyo on business, he and his co-workers were compelled to attend a work outing at a Japanese bath house with one of his superiors at Dentsu, CEO Toyo Shigeta. In court papers, Biegel alleges that while at the bath house, he and his co-workers were “expected to climb naked” into a bath with Shigeta. In his complaint, Biegel claims that he was “offended and humiliated by this outrageous, sexually degrading experience imposed upon him as a condition of his employment.”

The defendants in their court papers do not deny that Biegel was taken to the Japanese bath house by Shigeta. Instead, the defendants challenge his allegation by claiming that Biegel waited over a year-and-a-half after purportedly visiting the bath house before he allegedly spoke to Shigeta about it. Further, the defendants maintain that the bath house is not “objectively offensive.” In moving to dismiss the complaint, the defendants argue that “well-known tourist guides such as Time Out Tokyo, Frommer’s Tokyo, Lonely Planet Tokyo and Rough Guide to Tokyo depict the Bathhouse as a classy, clean and traditional family venue...” The court papers also note that bath house patrons are provided with robes during their experience.

The defendants’ arguments with respect to the bath house may pose some challenges. Plainly, the disclaimer-like assertion, that bath robes are provided to patrons, fails to address the simple fact that the robes eventually are meant to come off, when one is stepping into the communal bath. Also, it is not effective for defendants to argue that bath houses have been a major part of Japanese culture and tradition, since today the bath house appears to be in decline. According to web-japan.org and japan-guide.com, the Japanese bath house, or Sento, has been decreasing in numbers in recent decades as private baths have become prevalent in Japanese homes.

Further, U.S. employment discrimination laws rely on the perspective of a reasonable person to determine what constitutes sexual harassment. In our experience, international companies with offices in the U.S. may encounter issues where American social norms and broad human rights laws leave less room for conduct that may otherwise be considered acceptable in other countries.

When it comes to sexual harassment and the workplace, the maxim, “It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye” sometimes becomes conventional wisdom. Corporate outings at bathhouses, brothels (also alleged in Biegel’s complaint) and strip clubs are activities that can become the genesis of sexual harassment and discrimination claims, regardless of which country these outings occur in.