An employee filed a harassment complaint. Then she was fired after she secretly tape-recorded a private meeting with two managers who were investigating the claim. Was it retaliation?
The facts:
An employee filed a sexual harassment complaint against a co-worker, and the company investigated. While the investigation was still going on, the woman was called into a meeting with two of her supervisors. Assuming they wanted to talk about her complain, she sneaked a tape-recorder into the room to gather evidence in her favor (though the meeting was actually about her struggling performance). Once the company found out about her espionage work, the woman was fired. She sued, claiming unlawful retaliation.
The employer said:
The employee wasn’t fired because she complained about harassment — she was fired because she engaged in inappropriate conduct. Even if the conduct was related to her harassment claim, it was still worthy of termination.
Who won the case?
Answer: The employer.
Why: The court agreed that secretly tape-recording a meeting was grounds for termination. As the judge said, the law protects employees who complaint about legal violations but does not give them “a license to engage in dubious self-help tactics or workplace espionage in order to gather evidence of discrimination.”
The company did the right thing by investigating the woman’s complaints. Her own behavior was to blame when she was terminated before the investigation was finished.
Cite: Argyropoulos v. City of Alton
