Workplace law is like a box of chocolates… Take the recent case out of the 3rd Circuit (DE, NJ, PA) that clarifies constructive discharge. It is a short 5-day tale of a new HR Director:
From day one, things were bumpy for the new HR Director at Cardone Industries in the Philadelphia area. Here is the court’s description:
“On her first day, she questioned the racial and gender makeup of Cardone’s upper management. On her second, she learned her office was located not in Cardone’s headquarters, but a less hospitable satellite facility where ‘the overwhelming majority of [Cardone’s] minority employees work.’ Day three brought news that business at Cardone was less robust than billed during her interviews. Vendor payments lagged, layoffs loomed, hiring was now frozen.”
By day five, she quit halfway through and filed a lawsuit in which she charged her former employer with discrimination and infliction of emotional distress. A district court dismissed her complaint, and the 3rd Circuit agreed.
What happened here? The new HR Director’s concerns were addressed–or in the case of the cockroach in her office on Day 5–being addressed. The company let her go home for the day as they were addressing her filthy office and she quit. The court found: “Constructive discharge occurs when an employer knowingly permit[s] conditions … so intolerable that a reasonable person subject to them would resign…” (Italics added).
Cardone Industries may not get an A for effort but the plaintiff failed to show their actions were knowing and intolerable. Quitting before the employer has a chance to address concerns is not constructive discharge–which wipes out all those requested damages too.
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