More on Sexual Harassment

As we have predicted, in the wake of revelations of unbridled, systemic abuse, sexual harassment cases are going to be easier to bring and easier to prove.   One example is the reasoning in Minarsky v. Susquehanna County, 895 F.3d 303 (3rd Cir. 2018).  There, the Court of Appeals vacated the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the employer – which would have robbed Ms. Minarsky of her right to a jury trial.  The Court of Appeals held that it was for a jury to decide, among other things, whether the employer’s exercised reasonable care to prevent unlawful harassment, especially given that Ms. Minarsky was required to work alone with the alleged harasser every Friday; whether, under what circumstances, Ms. Minarsky’s delay in reporting the harassment was unreasonable – going so far as to hold that a failure to report at all is not per se unreasonable;  and the impact of “prolonged, agonizing harassment” on the reasonableness of Ms. Minarsky’s efforts to manage the situation on her own.