United States: Videotape of Plaintiff’s Interaction With Guest Dooms Retaliatory Discharge Claim

A former employee’s claim that her former employer improperly discharged her in retaliation for filing a workers’ compensation claim was appropriately disposed of at the summary judgment level where the employee could not show that her employer’s explanations for discharging her—which were supported by a videotape—amounted to pretext. The bizarre video showed that the former employee verbally engaged a visitor at her employer’s hotel when he complained about a vending machine, that she taunted and dared the visitor to join her on her side of the counter and then blocked his attempt to exit the location. The video continued to show the former employee push the visitor into a wall, swatting and clawing at his face. They tussled for a few seconds, and the visitor slammed the former employee to the floor, kicked her twice, flung open the door, and then left. The employee subsequently filed a claim for her work-related injuries, but was fired when her supervisors viewed the videotape.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Witham v. Intown Suites Louisville Northeast, LLC, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 4444 (6^th Cir., Mar. 10, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 104.07.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law.

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