Posted on 04/28/2006 4:34:18 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
A jury awarded $500,000 Friday to a woman who sued her employer after she was spanked in front of her colleagues in what the company called a camaraderie-building exercise.
The jury of six men and six women found that Janet Orlando had suffered from sexual harassment and sexual battery when she was paddled on her backside on three occasions during her employment at home security company Alarm One Inc. in Fresno.
The jurors, however, said that Orlando did not suffer from sexual assault as she had claimed.
Orlando, 53, had asked the jury for at least $1.2 million in lost wages, medical costs and damages, alleging discrimination, assault, battery and infliction of emotional distress.
Orlando was awarded $10,000 for economic loss, $40,000 for future medical costs and $450,000 for emotional distress, pain and suffering.
The trial's punitive phase was scheduled to start Friday afternoon, when jurors must decide how the company should be punished.
Orlando's attorney, Nicholas "Butch" Wagner, said his client was satisfied with the award.
"It's in the ballpark," Wagner said. "It's what I thought they would come back with."
K. Pancho Baker, an attorney for the Anaheim-based company, said he thought the award was excessive.
"I think the jury was so upset at Alarm One that they went overboard," Baker said. "Not to say that what Alarm One did was right, but this allows her to manipulate the system."
During the trial, company attorneys revealed that Orlando had sued a previous employer, also claiming that she'd been sexually harassed and forced to quit.
Orlando quit the Alarm One job in 2004, less than a year after she was hired, saying she couldn't bear the humiliation of the company's team-building practices.
Sales teams were encouraged to compete, and the losers were forced to eat baby food, wear diapers, or get spanked on the buttocks with an opposing company's metal-poled yard signs, according to court documents.
Lawyers for the company said Orlando and others took part in the exercises willingly. The practice stopped in 2004, when Orlando sued and another employee said she had been hurt.
Orlando, who she saw herself as a mother-figure to others in her team, said she found it degrading to have to turn around, show her backside to a roomful of young men and women and get paddled.
I remember the 2 day Napa Valley experience, well, the second day, anyway, groggily. ;-)
They can horse whip me, for that kind of money.
Company Sales Manager, Douglas K. Neidermeyer, could not be reached for comment.
Another Duke case at work.
Special classes with special rights require turning off common sense.
SPANK ME! PLEASE! Can I too then get $500,000? Did she have objections before she was spanked or only after she realized what she could extort these sort of sums?
Sheeee, should have tried Infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning back in the 60's.
That would've really unhinged the poor dear.
Having said that, who're the ignoramsuses in that company who think they can get away with 'team building' forty years later?
This woman sounds like the type who fishes for lawsuits, but that being said, I really hate stupid "team building" exercises and other such silly games. I would have told them to eff off if they tried to get me to a wear diaper and eat baby food.
It's "common sense" to make your emploees eat baby food, wear diapers, or get spanked on the buttocks with an opposing company's metal-poled yard signs?
They were idiots, they pay. I don't have a problem with that.
Fresno jury awards $1.7 million to woman spanked at work
http://www.bakersfield.com/119/story/48701.html
By JULIANA BARBASSA
The Associated Press
FRESNO
A jury awarded $1.7 million Friday to a woman who sued her employer after she was spanked in front of her colleagues in what the company called a camaraderie-building exercise.
The jury of six men and six women found that Janet Orlando had suffered from sexual harassment and sexual battery when she was paddled on her backside on three occasions during her employment at home security company Alarm One Inc. in Fresno.
The jurors, however, said that Orlando did not suffer from assault as she had claimed.
Orlando, 53, had asked the jury for $1.2 million in lost wages, medical costs and damages, alleging discrimination, assault, battery and infliction of emotional distress.
Orlando was awarded $10,000 for economic loss, $40,000 for future medical costs and $450,000 for emotional distress, pain and suffering. During the punitive phase of the trial, the jurors awarded Orlando an additional $1.2 million.
Orlando's attorney, Nicholas "Butch" Wagner, did not immediately return calls for comment.
K. Poncho Baker, an attorney for the Anaheim-based company, said he thought the award was excessive.
"I think the jury was so upset at Alarm One that they went overboard," Baker said. "Not to say that what Alarm One did was right, but this allows her to manipulate the system."
During the trial, company attorneys revealed that Orlando had sued a previous employer, also claiming that she'd been sexually harassed and forced to quit.
Orlando quit the Alarm One job in 2004, less than a year after she was hired, saying she couldn't bear the humiliation of the company's team-building practices.
Sales teams were encouraged to compete, and the losers were forced to eat baby food, wear diapers, or get spanked on the buttocks with an opposing company's metal-poled yard signs, according to court documents.
Lawyers for the company said Orlando and others took part in the exercises willingly. The practice stopped in 2004, when Orlando sued and another employee said she had been hurt.
Orlando, who she saw herself as a mother-figure to others in her team, said she found it degrading to have to turn around, show her backside to a roomful of young men and women and get paddled.
Published: Friday, April 28, 2006 17:37 PDT
Where do I go to get spanked at work for $500,000?
If I only knew, sigh. Line forms here. ;-)
Having a firm foundation in moralðical business practices could be a big A$$et. ;-)
R-I-G-H-T!
Never make any joke against any race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, age, gender, hair color, car make, animals, plants..... For Gods sake, have no dinning outs or dinning ins at the company and ban them in the armed forces. Of course hazing is completely out of the picture! Change our vocabulary and rename “Uranus” and sexual “harassment” since those words sound bad. In fact, lets name it “BCE” since we have to take “Christ” out of our secular perfect little socialist world picture. Why not name it “X-mas” while at it? Oh wait, we already have done that. Let’s begin writing all sentences that reference someone, with "person" or "he/she". I'm going to teach my son about the "person in the moon" tonight, since I don't want him to grow up as a narrow minded bigot like his dad is.
You know what you forget? People are humans, not robots.
The real jerks are not those who make a harmless prank that is somehow institutionally established in some right of passage, but those dorks who knowingly go along with it to just later sue. MOST cases of sexual harassment in the DoD for example never make it past the EEO office since they are bogus. MOST cases are a means to get back because of a bad review, because the female soldier does not like the boss, because LaKiesha heard she can cash in $500,000 if she sues. The whole “I was sexually harassed” or “racially profiled” or “whatever” has become a method to extort something (money/job/performance evaluation etc) for the most part, or somehow get back at someone. Again – MOST cases are flat out bogus.
At US schools we want our sons to be borderline gay! Any act that may be perceived as “manly” is immediately squelched. We don’t want any pranks, rough housing or anything else. Did you hear- At Duke there is a Lacrosse team that is a bit rough and parties hard! OMG! Can you believe that?! I heard there were drunken people there before! OMG! - Com on, this is ridiculous. What was it like when you went to college?
Hint- People will remain people no matter how hard you pretend we are all robots.
If you ever belonged to an organization that is fairly tight (outside of a church group) you’d know that these sort of bonding events are common place. In the military we have dinning ins, and there too things can get rough. And it’s all in good fun AND even NEEDED for the organizations health. Here’s another example: German Fasching. Some could perceive that as offensive too. The only thing that bothers me is that they are to cowardly to make any comments about Islamists, the Koran or Mohammed or even the censorship or cartoon issue, yet rip their mouths open about the US. In it’s essence it’s a good thing and every society at every time and every where does these sort of things. Maybe there is something in the human psyche that needs this? I don’t know, but the Germans do it (Fasching), in New Orleans we do it, Cinqo De Mayo, and and and. Do you think John Belushi invented the Frat house? Do you think he started it? Why do many people go to Vegas? Why do they go to Panama city?
If a woman goes to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, gets tanked, and some drunk guy asks her to show her boobs, should she be offended? If she wants to be part of an organization that behaves this way, if she knowingly goes along with it (voluntarily), if others also get this sort of treatment, if this sort of thing is part of the organizational traditions, what should she get if she –“LATER”- decides that it was wrong? Frankly I’m tired of hearing these sobbing winning weasels cry out and expect all others to bend forward and backwards to accommodate them. “Screw them!”
Right after she don’t get a cent, security should escort her to get her belongings and then show her the door.
I saw this story on the screen in the elevator on my ride down from the office this evening. She said something similar.
Do note what she was spanked with: a paper sign.
MM
You sound offened (Like I care)
Fort Gordon, Signal OCS, Class 03-67, SIR!
We probably had it a little easier than you infantry boys but, still, it was no picnic, even after some ruling came down from Washington requiring that we be allowed to sleep unmolested for some certain number of hours per night (which helped a lot).
I remembered so fondly, seeing your post, one night when we had a pogeybait party after lights out. Somebodys wife had loaded a garbage can with hamburgers and soda and doughnuts. I was on the top bunk right beside the door of an old WWII-style barracks.
When the duty officer walked through that door, we were eyeball to eyeball, heads maybe three feet apart. I had a half a humburger left. There was no question that we were going to suffer mightily so no need to act innocent. I grabbed that half a burger and stuffed it in my mouth in one last huge defiant bite!
Needless to say, we were up all night cleaning up the nuked barracks and buffing the floor!
Why in the heck am I nostalgic about this? LOL
Well, it's official. You can get a larger judgement for being spanked than for a wrongful death. . .
..yeah...thats what they all say...in the begining...
Why are you so nostalgic? You got me. But I know the feeling.
We had our 35th reunion a couple of years ago. Went to Benning and they treated us royally. Tours, live fire demos, briefings. The old barracks was still there but something was different...air conditioning!
The course has changed now, too. Non-branch specific, 14 weeks instead of 26, and none of the physical harassment we went through (they couldn't do it like that today, they'd be brought up on charges), but they seemingly put a lot more mental pressure on the candidates. Benning spit and polish is gone too. We were scratching our heads as to how this would turn out a better Infantry officer. We decided it's because of the volunteer nature of the Army...a 2LT doesn't have to push a bunch of draftees who'd brought their anti-war/military sentiments with them from civilian life up a hill or otherwise make them do things they'd rather not be doing.
Pogey parties...our platoon was on the ground floor. With just the right kind of timing, when the TAC officer was upstairs harassing naother platoon...why did we think we were smarter than those guys. Our all nighter only ended when our TAC, who'd been a running back at ASU, whimsically proposed that it would end for us if anyone in the platoon could beat him in 40 yards. One of our guys (Mike, if you're reading this give me an email and identify yourself)did and we got to leave the lowcrawl pit under the 250' jump towers at about 0230. Of course, his ego damaged, Rocky made us pay for the next several weeks.
Those were the days.
When I arrived, there were rumors of people lowcrawling down the company street in their greens, but that could have been just barracks legend.
As I mentioned, they started letting us sleep after a few weeks, although my class had already probably suffered through the worst of it. (Even when we were left to sleep in those first weeks, people would wake up and make a racket because of the cramps in their legs.)
But what really made me sick was when I, as a senior candidate, had to watch a new class of smacks being allowed to eat normally! Take a normal amount of time and not sit in front of the tape on three inches of their chair, etc.! And no one was allowed to walk up to their table and chat with them to keep them from having a chance to eat!
Those wusses had NO fun!
As to mental pressure, I'm not sure what could be worse than people being pulled out of class and panelled (kicked out) right up to the last day before graduation. I'm not proud to admit that I was on the bubble myself, and I did not enjoy hearing someone enter the back of the classroom.
We Signal guys were planning on an easy war. Getting kicked out was an immediate ticket to Nam in our AIT combat MOS. Some of us were stressing! I was lucky. The President decided that he needed at least one more 2nd lieuy even if the guy was a slacker!
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