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Two tales of failure to exhaust administrative remedies
March 09, 2005 by Ross Runkel at LawMemo
Today's Employment Law Memo from LawMemo.Com tells two tales of employees who went to court without exhausting their administrative remedies. In one case it was a failure to include all his claims in his EEOC charge, and in the other it was a failure to use the employer's internal remedies.
In Parisi v. Boeing (8th Cir 03/07/2005) The Boeing Company was selling its plant and laid off many employees, including Parisi, on January 12, 2001. Parisi filed an EEOC charge on July 23 alleging that Boeing violated the ADEA by laying him off and by refusing to rehire him (both took place January 12). OK, one refusal to rehire. When he sued in federal court, Parisi claimed Boeing had failed to rehire him not just once, but on 94 occasions - all later. One problem. Parisi never mentioned these 94 incidents in his EEOC charge. The 8th Circuit held that each failure to rehire was a separate incident that was not "reasonably related" to what was in his EEOC charge. Claims dismissed. Message to plaintiffs: Tell everything in the EEOC charge. File an amended charge or an additional charge if you need to.
Campbell v. Regents of University of California (California 03/07/2005) involved a university employee bringing a whistleblower suit under California statutes. The university was set up by the state constitution with "quasi-legislative powers." The court held that the university exercised those powers when it adopted a formal Policy that required that a whistleblower's complaint be filed under that Policy. The employee did not file a complaint under the Policy. The California Supreme Court wrote a lot of words, as usual, and unanimously concluded that the employee "should have exhausted the university administrative remedies before proceeding to court." Judgment for the university.
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