Traditional discrimination or retaliation claims involves the employer taking the discriminatory or retaliatory action. Often times companies will try to create an independent process for terminating an employee to avoid liability. For example: an employee receives several disciplinary write-ups. After a certain amount of write-ups, Human Resources becomes involved. At large companies, the HR Representative may have never met the individual. After review the write-ups, HR determines to terminate the individual. Companies then argue, how could the termination be discriminatory or retaliatory if the individual making the decision has never even met the employee being terminated? Clever. But so are Judges.
Continue reading “Cat’s Paw Theory: Can a Company be held liable if the discriminating supervisor and the individual(s) who made the decision to terminate are different?” →