Legal Question. Can my mom sue her employer for putting her in an unsafe and hostile environment?
My mother was attacked at work by a co worker who was just told she was fired and thought my mom has something to do with it. This hostile coworker has been harassing my mother for months.Some occassions the lady has just blatantly cursed my mom out and nothing happened to her. My mom put in her two weeks notice. it was then that the manager said he would fire the other lady. Well the morning of the attack, the lady came up and their manager informed her she was fired. She began cursing my mom but my mom walked away. The lady jumped her from behind and hit her repeatedly in the head with a coffee cup. the ambulance and police were called the lady went to jail. And after watching the tapes, the lady was coming back at my mom with a knife but someone stopped her. It was then the manager says oh yeah she carries it all the time. I would like to know if my mom can sue the lady and the company for allowing the workplace to be an unsafe environment? It was also discovered that the lady has a lenghty record which would have disqualified her fromt he job, so I’m thinking they didn’t even do a background check. I’m just concerned about all these hospital and doctors bills that she now has.
Not wanting to hurt the ecomony, but my mother is almost 60yrs old..and her well being is my #1 concern.
Tagged with: hostile
Filed under: Hostile Workplace
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Workers have the right to refuse to do an unsafe task and can’t be fired for it. I don’t really know much besides that.
Yep. Hire a lawyer. Should be good for a half million dollars.
Yeah I guess you could sue the company and put them out of business, and everyone there would lose their job, and then you’d have ALL of them coming after your mom.
Way to help out the economy.
BW
workers comp,
and your Mother should talk to a lawyer. Until she does do not talk about this to anyone cause it may get back to the wrong people and hurt you mother’s legal actions. Think if you tell someone who tell someone who works there that your mom may sue?
Your poor mum….
If you were in the UK then you could definitely sue not sure about the law where you are but i would certainly make further enquries as your mum should not be out of pocket especially as she did everything right by telling her employer.
Her employer handled the situation badly and put your mum at risk. But your mum will need as much evidence as possible to take it further witnesses names and the fact the woman was taken to jail is a good start.
Filing a worker’s comp claim is should take care of the lost wages and medical expenses, including post traumatic medical follow-up. But that is a simplistic answer. Legally it gets very complicated after filing the Worker’s Comp claim since workers comp is an “exclusive remedy.” In other words if your mom files a workers comp claim she cannot file certain other types of claims against the company.
Your mom may have a claim for an unsafe work environment if the attack was foreseeable, She may have a claim against the company for the actual attack. She may have a claim against the attacker, but she probably has no money (but might have insurance coverage). In hindsight, the company should have had the police or company security at the time/location the co-worker was fired.
Carrying a knife at work might or might not be ok. Depends on the state, company policy, and type of knife. Carrying a swiss army knife on your key-chain or a hunting knife in your purse is quite different.
Your mom should speak to an attorney that understands both workers comp law and personal injury law for your state. There are a number of very time sensitive legal decisions that will need to me made to both protect your mother and compensate her for all her losses.
The National Institute For The Prevention Of Workplace Violence has a very good compilation of article regarding workplace violence. see http://www.workplaceviolence911.com/Articles/articles.jsp?listType=1015 The website also includes an “ask the expert” email address on the left hand isde.