In a new decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers California, has decided that a sexual harassment victim’s 19-day delay in reporting the misconduct to her employer wasn’t an unreasonable failure to take advantage of corrective opportunities provided by the employer. As a result, the employee can take her sexual harassment lawsuit to trial.
The case involved Eileen Craig, who worked for M & O Agencies in Tucson, Ariz. Craig’s supervisor, Leon Byrd, allegedly followed her into a restroom, where he grabbed her and kissed her. Craig waited 19 days to report the problem, and the sexually harassing behavior continued in the interim. Once Craig reported the harassment, however, M & O took immediate and successful action to stop the harassment.
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Craig sued M & O for sexual harassment under Title VII, the federal antibias law. M & O said that the case should be thrown out, arguing that an employer can avoid liability under Title VII in hostile work environment cases where the employer exercised care to prevent or correct sexually harassing behavior and the employee unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventative or corrective opportunities.
But the Ninth Circuit found that Craig’s 19-day delay in reporting the harassment wasn’t unreasonable, particularly because Craig might have believed that the situation would just resolve itself and she might have feared adverse consequences if she reported Byrd.
We’ll have more on this case in an upcoming issue of the California Employer Advisor.
Additional Resources:
Craig v. M & O Agencies, Inc., U.S.C.A. 9th Cir. No. 05-16427, 2007
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Information on Sexual Harassment