Employment Lawyer Blog

The Producer of Superman, Jon Peters, lost a significant sexual harassment lawsuit last week. A jury ordered the hairdresser-cum-studio executive to pay $3 million to his former assistant, Shelly Morita, who waged a five-year legal battle to bring her former boss to justice. Morita will get $822,000 in lost wages on top of $2.5 million in punitive damages.
According to an August 27 article at msnbc.com, "[the] 44-year-old single mother sued Peters and his company, J.P. Organization Inc., in December 2006, alleging he fondled her at his Malibu home and climbed into bed with her in an Australian hotel during the 2005 filming of "Superman Returns." She claimed that she couldn't find work in Hollywood after suing Peters because of his pull in the industry."

A Hollywood Reporter article reported that: "Peters [also allegedly] withheld a $25,000 Christmas bonus until [Morita] signed a confidentiality agreement."

The former hairdresser vowed to appeal the decision. But some pundits and entertainment watchers are considering the jury verdict to be a kind of "shot across the bow" - warning Hollywood executives, producers, agents, and other big wigs that the "swimming with the sharks" treatment will not, and should not, be tolerated.

Swimming with Sharks, starring Kevin Spacey, is about a tyrannical producer who tormented his young wannabe-Hollywood-player assistant until the assistant snapped, kidnapped Spacey and returned the torment, literally. It's no secret among Hollywood insiders that Hollywood players often mistreat, abuse, harass, and otherwise degrade their assistants. It's an open secret, actually. But, the question is: What can be done to change the culture in Hollywood so that these big wigs treat assistants and other supporting staffers with respect - or at least end the most flagrant abuses?

Is it a matter of simply going after the worst offenders - like Mr. Peters - or is it a matter of more systematically changing the culture in Hollywood to hammer home the point that bad treatment of employees will simply not be tolerated? Or maybe it is both - go after every violation until the norm changes.

It is indeed possible for whole industries to be corrupt. The New York City restaurant industry, for instance, for years engaged in bad practices that allowed "a cultural norm" to develop that encouraged restaurateurs to violate wage and hour laws. Thanks to persistent legal action against these restaurateurs - waged in part by Joseph and Herzfeld's own attorney Maimon Kirschenbaum - we may now soon see changes to the culture. But it's no doubt going to be a long and vigorous battle.

If you or someone you care about has recently been mistreated, harassed, or retaliated against, the team at Joseph & Kirschenbaum can help you. Connect with us today at 866-348-7394, or explore more about our firm at www.jhllp.com.

In a recent post on how workers can deal with sexual harassment, we discussed how people typically react to insensitive, inappropriate, and sometimes outright malevolent workplace comments. We also talked about a school of thought known as nonviolent communication, which emphasizes constructive problem-solving by getting the parties involved to focus on fundamental universal human feelings and needs at the core of conflicts.

In this follow-up post, we will apply Dr. Marshall Rosenberg's conflict resolution theories to a typical workplace harassment problem.

Say your boss makes a comment to the effect of "Those jeans looks so hot on you, I just want to squeeze you all over," and that makes you feel disgusted. According to Rosenberg, you can use two paths here. First, you can express your own feelings and needs by using a four-part system.

Step 1: Observation (done without judgment - just stating the facts): "When you just said to me 'You look hot in my jeans, I want to squeeze them'..."

Step 2: State your feelings, taking responsibility for them: "I felt humiliated and angry..."

Step 3: Discuss your need that was or was not met: "Because my need for respect and professionalism at work was not met..."

Step 4: Make a concrete request: "Will you avoid making remarks like that in the future?"

Notice that, in this approach, you take complete responsibility for your feelings and needs. (No one can "make you feel" anything, according to Marshall Rosenberg's paradigm.)

The second approach involves focusing attentively on the other person's feelings and needs. Often, when you empathize with another person, that person will then open up and listen to your needs and feelings. The process is the same.

Step 1: Begin with an observation: "When you said 'you look sexy in your jeans'..."

Step 2: Guess about the other person's feelings (you can never really know, so you must guess): "Were you feeling aggressive..."

Step 3: Guess at his needs: "Because you wanted to test boundaries?"

Step 4: Make a definitive, actionable request: "Please refrain from making similar comments to me in the future."

Again, when you go this route, you avoid judging, condemning, or evaluating the other person. You are focusing on feelings and needs. You open the door to dialogue instead of immediately putting the other person on the defensive. Focusing on the offender's needs may not diffuse the situation, in which case, you might need to go to a higher authority to get the behavior to stop. But you might be able -- by practicing empathy in this way -- to get the offender to open up to your request (i.e. to stop doing the offensive behavior and/or apologize.)

This is only the tip of the iceberg of the nonviolent communication methodology, but it might be a useful paradigm to explore, particularly if you have chronic workplace problems. You can learn more about nonviolent communication at the official NVC website. If you need help understanding your rights and legal resources, connect with the team at Joseph & Kirschenbaum at 866-348-7394, or explore additional resources at www.jhllp.com.