{"id":547,"date":"2015-02-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-02T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/events-lindabury.blawgcloud.com\/2015\/02\/perceived-ostracism-by-coworkers-does-not-create-employer-liability-for-hostile-work-environment.html"},"modified":"2016-08-24T11:23:13","modified_gmt":"2016-08-24T15:23:13","slug":"perceived-ostracism-by-coworkers-does-not-create-employer-liability-for-hostile-work-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/perceived-ostracism-by-coworkers-does-not-create-employer-liability-for-hostile-work-environment.html","title":{"rendered":"Perceived Ostracism By Co-workers Does Not Create Employer Liability For Hostile Work Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (the &ldquo;LAD&rdquo;), an employer who acts negligently in eradicating discriminatory conduct from the workplace may be held vicariously&nbsp;liable for the discriminatory actions of its employees. In a victory for employers statewide, the Appellate Division refused to find an oil delivery company&nbsp;liable for one of its trainer&rsquo;s racially charged statements to a co-worker where the employer had appropriate mechanisms in place to prevent and address incidents of unlawful workplace harassment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Facts:&nbsp; <\/strong>In , the plaintiff employee, an African-American, asserted that he was subjected to a racially-hostile work environment as a result of certain offensive, racially-charged comments by a trainer who was not a supervisor of the employee.&nbsp; After the employee complained to the company about the trainer&rsquo;s behavior, his supervisors met with him to discuss the incident, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/workplace-harassment-training-investigation.html\">conducted an internal investigation<\/a> and assigned the employee a new trainer.&nbsp; The company also maintained a detailed non-discrimination policy in its employee handbook that was distributed to every employee.&nbsp; The employee left the job despite the company&rsquo;s efforts, claiming that he felt ostracized by his co-workers following his complaint to management.&nbsp; Thereafter, the employee filed suit claiming he was subjected to a racially-hostile work environment in violation of the LAD.&nbsp; The company argued that it was not liable for the co-worker&rsquo;s actions, pointing to its policies against discrimination and the prompt remedial actions it took in response to the employee&rsquo;s complaint. &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Finding:&nbsp; <\/strong>The court agreed with the company and dismissed the discrimination suit.&nbsp; The court cited the fact that the company kept a detailed employee handbook with a policy barring harassment and discrimination and providing detailed procedures to be followed when reporting and investigating harassment and discrimination claims.&nbsp; Moreover, when the company learned of the employee&rsquo;s complaint it did not ignore it or otherwise overlook reprehensible behavior, but undertook efforts to investigate his claim and separated him from the alleged harasser.&nbsp; In the face of the efforts, the employee&rsquo;s perception of his co-workers&rsquo; opinions of him was insufficient to support a hostile work environment claim.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/perceived-ostracism-by-coworkers-does-not-create-employer-liability-for-hostile-work-environment.html\"  title=\"Continue Reading Perceived Ostracism By Co-workers Does Not Create Employer Liability For Hostile Work Environment\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (the &ldquo;LAD&rdquo;), an employer who acts negligently in eradicating discriminatory conduct from the workplace may be held vicariously&nbsp;liable for the discriminatory actions of its employees. In a victory for employers statewide, the Appellate Division refused to find an oil delivery company&nbsp;liable for one of its trainer&rsquo;s racially charged [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,247],"tags":[],"coauthors":[214],"class_list":["post-547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insights","category-labor-employment-insights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Perceived Ostracism By Co-workers Does Not Create Employer Liability For Hostile Work Environment &#8212; February 2, 2015 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (the &ldquo;LAD&rdquo;), an employer who acts negligently in eradicating discriminatory conduct from the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/perceived-ostracism-by-coworkers-does-not-create-employer-liability-for-hostile-work-environment.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Perceived Ostracism By Co-workers Does Not Create Employer Liability For Hostile Work Environment &#8212; February 2, 2015 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. 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