Here’s an easy recipe for a lawsuit: A manager sees a resume and likes the candidate’s qualifications — but after meeting the applicant in person, immediately changes his mind.

That happened in one recent case.

An employee applied online for a job at a debt collection agency. She had eight years of relevant experience, and the hiring manager liked her qualifications enough to invite her in for an interview.

But once the candidate met the manager in person, she was immediately turned down for the job. Why? Apparently because she was blind.

According to the candidate, once the manager realized she was blind, he told her, “This isn’t going to work out,” and sent her on her way.

The woman tried to explain that she’d spent eight years doing similar work for eight years with the help of assistive technology for the blind, but again the manager told her she wouldn’t be considered for the job.

She took her complaints to the EEOC, which helped her sue. She won a $55,000 settlement.

This case highlights the need to train managers on disability discrimination while recruiting. Advances in technology have made it possible to accommodate more qualified employees than ever — and at a lower cost. According to a recent study by the Job Accommodation Network, 56% of accommodations cost nothing at all, while another 37% involve only a small, one-time cost ($600 on average).

As this case shows, failing to explore those options can create big legal problems — but that’s not all. As the EEOC’s lawyer in the case noted, the candidate had been successful performing similar work in the past, and company missed out on her skills and expertise.

Cite: EEOC v. Sentry Credit, Inc.

When fighting bias claims, nothing can doom a company quite like the employee showing the judge a discriminatory e-mail or text message from a supervisor. But as this recent case shows, there are still steps employers can take to protect themselves from those claims.

An African-American security guard sued his employer for discrimination. His reason: racially charged jokes send to him by his supervisor via text messages.

One of the messages, which was sent to several employees, contained a serious racial slur. On top of that, the employee also claimed white employees got more favorable work assignments than minorities.

Employees who have permanent written evidence of harassment or bias (like a defamatory e-mail or text message) usually do well in court.

But not this time. Here’s why:

After getting the messages, the employee complained to HR. After getting the complaint, the company:

1. gave the supervisor a “final warning”
2. transferred the employee to a location with a different supervisor (which the employee had requested), and
3. looked into his claims about work assignments, but found no evidence he was right.

After that, the employee sued anyway, claiming the company didn’t do enough. But the court disagreed.

Prompt investigation and appropriate discipline can protect companies from managers’ bias and stupid misuse of technology.

Cite: Griffin vs. Harrisburg Property Services, Inc.

When employees are caught breaking the company’s computer use policy, they usually have an explanation of why they’re innocent. Does that mean bosses can’t fire them without absolute proof?

No, it just means you need to conduct consistent and thorough investigations. Here’s what happened in a recent court case:

A manager noticed excessive personal computer use by one of his employees, so he asked IT to examine her hard drive and Web browsing history.

What they found was worse then the manager expected: The hard drive contained pictures of nude men, and her work e-mail contained a message with a pornographic image attached. The employee was fired for violating the company’s computer use policy.

The employee, an African-American, denied responsibility for the images. She said she received the e-mail from a co-worker and didn’t know how the pictures got on the hard drive. She claimed she had complained to HR about the images, but nothing was done about.

As for her termination, she believed she was fired because of her race. She sued the company.

In court, the employee pointed to numerous events to show her co-workers were biased against her. For example, she claimed she was told she “didn’t know her place” and said other employees disapproved of her dating white men.

She argued the company didn’t investigate the computer situation thoroughly enough and had just wanted to get rid of her.

The court didn’t buy the argument. First, the instances she mentioned had nothing to do with the people who decided to fire her and were just stray comments that didn’t seem connected to the termination.

Second, even if she was telling the truth about the pornography on her computer, that didn’t necessarily matter. The company just had to show it honestly and reasonably believed she broke the policy. It did that, and the judge tossed the case.

When it comes to computer policy violations, figuring out who’s to blame can be complicated. Employees in other lawsuits have claimed viruses automatically downloaded porn or that someone logged into their computers without permission.

But the good news for HR is you don’t need to prove to a judge that the employee was guilty — just that you investigated properly and made a non-biased decision based on the information you had.

Cite: Twymon v. Wells Fargo & Co.

You can’t promote everyone — managers frequently have to say no to qualified candidates, simply because they aren’t the best. Just make sure when that happens that they’ve the documented the real reason.

An African-American woman sued after being denied a promotion. The employer, a fire department, had a three-step process for promoting employees to captain:

1. Employees meeting minimum requirements took a written test
2. Those who passed took a job simulation test, and
3. A group of managers met to discuss the top three candidates and chose the best.

Twice the woman made it to the last step, but lost out to white males. According to her, it was because of her race and gender. She argued she had more relevant experience than the promoted employees, including several stints as acting captain.

The department claimed the group of managers had concerns about her performance and “interpersonal skills.”

The problem: The managers didn’t keep any record of the discussion, so the department couldn’t prove to the court the real rationale behind its decisions.

On the other hand, the employee presented recent performance evaluations that were consistently positive. The judge ruled in her favor.

Lesson: The employer had a multi-part decision-making process, but missed a critical step.

Without proper documentation, courts will be more inclined to believe the employee’s side of the story. That’s especially true when it comes to hiring and promotion decisions, which can be highly subjective.

Cite: Wesley v. Arlington County

You’d probably fire an employee who embarrasses the company online. What about someone who writes an inappropriate comment that never mentions his employer?

That’s happened recently at a Missouri school.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an online article asking readers, “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever eaten?”

One reader posted a one-word reply. The word? A vulgar term for a female body part.

The comment was immediately deleted by a site administrator. Within minutes, though, it reappeared. The administrator looked up the commenter’s IP address and found the comment came from a local school.

Believing it was most likely a student who posted the juvenile response, the paper contacted the school. It turned out the comment was written by an employee.

He was confronted by the school’s headmaster and resigned, the Huffington Post reports.

It certainly wasn’t the first time an employee lost his or her job because of something written online. But in most cases, the firing takes place to protect the company’s reputation or prevent online harassment — for example, when employees bad-mouth their employer or a boss or co-worker.

In this situation, though, the comment couldn’t be traced back to the school by any other than the folks behind the scenes at the paper’s Web site.

However, if the employee worked with children (no word as of yet on what exactly the man’s job was), just posting the comment may have been enough for the school to want him gone. Also, using an employer’s equipment to write an obscenity is, of course, frowned upon.

What do you think? Is an anonymous vulgarity enough to cost an employee his job? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Employees misbehaved online, and e-mail opened the doors to new legal dangers for employers – all that and in more in the top 10 HR Tech stories of 2009.

1. Feds crack down on I-9s: 4 things HR needs to know
2. Angry customer + YouTube = Ruined reputation
3. ‘I can’t work, I’m allergic to the Internet’
4. E-mailing at home: The latest FLSA trap?
5. New search engine specifically for HR and hiring managers
6. 4 dumb e-mail mistakes HR should avoid
7. Oops! Boss sends biased e-mail to applicant
8. Virus takes over PC, almost jails worker
9. Obama bans texting on the road
10. 6 dumb ways to get fired online

HR holds a lot of personal information about employees . And a federal bill could put a tougher burden on employers to protect that data.

The Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2009 is gaining steam and is going to set new, more precise rules for the management and safekeeping of corporate and government data.

The new act has just cleared a major hurdle, the Senate Judiciary Committee, with an overwhelming bipartisan vote.

The details are likely to change as the bill progresses, but there is no doubt that new, tougher rules on handling data breaches are on the way. Among the provisions likely to be included:

1. New stiffer federal penalties for identity theft.
2. The establishment of an Office of Federal Identity Protection will be established as part of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which will monitor data breaches and enforce identity theft laws.
3. A new standard for breach notification. Companies will have to notify all individuals whose data has been compromised. In some cases, credit rating agencies and the U.S. Secret service will also need to be notified.
4. New standards for data protection including encryption and safe data storage will allow for some exemptions form the notification requirements, and
5. Executives of companies that willfully avoid notification may be subject to criminal penalties.

While the new rules might be harsh, they will likely replace a patchwork of 45 state regulations currently on the books, allowing companies to follow one single set of procedures and safeguards nationwide.

For more info look here, and here.

HIPAA violations get more expensive

In other news, a recently passed law, the Health Information Technology for Clinical and Economic Health (HITECH) Act, significantly increases the penalties the feds can level against employers and health care providers for HIPAA violations.

Before the HITECH Act, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) could hand out a maximum fine of $100 for a single violation and $25,000 for all identical violations of the same provision. Now, the rules spell out a series of tiered minimum fines for individual claims, and a $1.5 million maximum when a group of employees are affected.

In addition to the uptick in fines, employers were also handed more responsibility in reporting breaches of health info. After discovering a security breach, companies will have to notify affected individuals, the HHS and, in some cases, “prominent media outlets.” Notice must be provided as soon as possible, no more than 60 days after the discovery.

What constitutes a breach? To trigger the notification requirements, the information leak must involve “personal health information” that’s lost or stolen and readable by whoever ends up with it (i.e. the data’s not encrypted).

The reporting rules go into effect on Feb. 22. The read the text of the rule, click here.

Social networking sites have made it easier for disgruntled customers to bash a company’s reputation online. And, as recent court cases show, it’s getting tough for employers to protect themselves.

According to a recent survey by Deloitte, 74% of employees say it’s easy to damage an employer’s reputation using social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.).

But just because employees are aware of the damage social networking slander can cause, it doesn’t mean they care.

In fact, the Deloitte study found that 61% of employees said they wouldn’t change what they do online — even if their activity was monitored by their employers. And half say an official company ban on negative comments wouldn’t change their behavior.

As these recent court decisions show, companies may have little recourse to respond after the damage is done:

1. Online comment wasn’t defamation

The owner of several restaurants was interviewed by his local newspaper, and the article appeared on the paper’s Web site. In response to one of the questions, the owner mentioned that he treats employees “with dignity and respect.”

Apparently the father of a former employee disagreed with him. He left a comment claiming his daughter was sexually harassed, and that the behavior was condoned by the owner. The company sued the commenter for defamation, but the case was thrown out. The judged ruled the comment was a matter of opinion and not subject to defamation laws.

2. Boss can’t read private forum

A group of employees had set up a private, invite-only group on Myspace. The purpose: “To vent about any BS” they had to deal with at work. Eventually, their boss got wind of the group, and needless to say, he wasn’t happy.

He asked an employee for the password, and she complied, afraid for her job. When he went to the site, the boss found disparaging comments directed at him and other managers. The two employees who started the group were fired.

They sued, claiming the company invaded their privacy. The court agreed — since the page was password-protected, the employees had a reasonable expectation that their comments would remain private. And company had no right to read the comments.

3. Confidential docs allowed to stay public

After a bank vice president was let go, he posted confidential company documents to a Web site. Allegedly, the documents exposed illegal activities.

The bank sued the owners of the Web site to force the removal of the documents. But the court ruled in favor of the site’s owners, saying they had a First Amendment right to keep the documents online. Also, the judge said taking them down would do little good, because they could have been copied and re-posted by other sites.

What can HR do?

That doesn’t mean you can’t fire any employee whose online activities hurt the company. Firing is OK in many cases — removing the damaging material is the hard part.

Your best bet? In your computer use policy, include a part banning conduct that damages the company’s reputation. Then monitor activity and discipline accordingly.

There’s a misconception that e-mail can ever be truly private. As this recent case shows, there’s always a chance that messages will find their way into the hands of unintended recipients.

A female sales manager at a car dealership was involved in a long-running dispute with a male co-worker. The woman routinely closed more sales than the man — she felt his belief that a women shouldn’t earn more money than him was the root of the problem.

One day, the two got into a verbal fight that culminated in the man calling her a “bitch” and walking out of the dealership. Rather than let the employee quit, the company called him and convinced him to come back to work.

The woman somehow gained access to the man’s e-mail account without his permission. She stumbled across an e-mail the co-worker sent to another employee, talking about her in insulting and sexually charged language (we won’t reprint it here — as the company itself admitted, the e-mail was “vulgar and offensive”).

She showed her boss a copy of the message, and the two employees got a verbal reprimand.

Shortly after, the dealership announced a new payment plan for sales managers. Under the new system, the managers would share a portion of their commissions. As the female employee saw it, the plan was basically a pay cut for her and a raise for the man, since she regularly received more in commissions than him.

That was the last straw for her. She quit and sued the company for gender bias and sexual harassment.

The company claimed the new pay plan was just an effort to save money and argued there was no evidence of any discrimination or harassment.

Regarding the e-mail, the dealership said the woman was never meant to see the message, so it couldn’t be seen as harassment.

The court disagreed. The e-mail showed what kind of environment existed in the workplace, and it didn’t matter if the offensive message was sent directly to her.

That, combined with the company’s tolerance when the male co-worker used a sexually derogatory term during their fight, sank the dealership’s case.

The lesson for managers: E-mail rarely stays private, and anything written can leave a permanent trail of evidence for an employee’s legal claims.

The e-mail in this case was something that obviously should never be said or written in the first place, but even seemingly innocuous comments can come back to haunt the company.

Cite: EEOC v. PVNF, LLC

With e-mail being introduced as evidence in more court cases, disgruntled employees seemingly could have a wealth of comments to potentially support their claims. Where do courts draw the line?

In one recent case, a 62-year-old employee was let go as part of a reduction in force. He thought his age was the reason he was laid off.

In court, the employee pointed to a series of e-mails between two managers about the possibility of an age bias claim. One e-mail discussing the upcoming termination ended with “P.S. I just cannot shake this feeling that we’re doomed!”

According to the employee, that proved age was a factor and the higher-ups were looking for ways to cover their tracks. The company, on the other hand, argued the managers were just concerned the employee would sue — which is exactly what happened.

The judge sided with the company, ruling that talking about a possible lawsuit doesn’t prove there actually was bias.

Avoid these conversations

The company got the suit tossed, but not without a lot of hassle — and legal fees. Best bet for managers: Discuss legal concerns in person only. As this case shows, employees may try to interpret what they read in an e-mail in a way that supports a nefarious claim.

Other e-mail conversations managers should avoid:

1. Complaints about legally protected actions (for example, “I can’t believe she’s taking leave again“)
2. Talks about whether or not the company should contact an attorney
3. Negative performance reviews, and
4. Discussions about salaries, bonuses or promotions.

Cite: Geiger v. Tower Automotive