Fired (straight) Arby's worker wins lawsuit

Note: What people don't realize is that you don't have to be gay to face discrimination on the basis of your sexual orientation or perceived orientation. This case, from the South Bend Tribune, illustrates that.

And another important point: The only reason she won the case is because the company didn't file papers on time. If they had, she wouldn't have had grounds to pursue the case.

Fired Arby's worker wins lawsuit

Claims friendship with gay co-worker led to harassment.

September 19, 2007

JEFF PARROTT Tribune Staff Writer

A St. Joseph County judge has awarded more than $50,000 in damages to a former Arby's employee who claimed that co-workers and male supervisors incorrectly believed she had a homosexual relationship with a co-worker and then harassed her over it.

Stacy McAnally's lawsuit, filed in 2004, claimed that the restaurant's owner, Mishawaka-based franchisee Best Beef Inc., not only did nothing to stop the harassment, but fired her in retaliation for reporting it.

McAnally, then a 32-year-old married mother of two, started working at the company's Plymouth Arby's in September 2003. After she became friends with an "openly gay" co-worker, two weeks into the job, rumors that the two women were lovers started circulating among employees, McAnally claimed in a complaint she filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

After her general manager, a woman, asked the gay co-worker if she was McAnally's "girlfriend," McAnally complained to the company's district manager. Four days later, and about four months after she was hired, she was fired "because I was not a team player," McAnally told the EEOC.

Best Beef claimed in court documents that it fired McAnally for failing to perform her duties and for missing work.

The company also claimed that it investigated McAnally's harassment claims but found no basis for them.

But the company never had the chance to formally argue its case in court because it missed the deadline for filing a response to McAnally's initial lawsuit.

That meant McAnally won by default. Best Beef acknowledged that its human resources manager had received a copy of the lawsuit in December 2004, but she was so overwhelmed with paperwork connected to the planned sale of 15 local Arby's locations to a Georgia-based company, that she temporarily misplaced the document, failing to forward it to Best Beef's attorney until four days after Circuit Court Judge Michael Gotsch entered the default judgment.

Best Beef asked Gotsch to set aside his judgment, citing "excusable neglect," a legal term defined in Indiana 's trial rules. But Gotsch denied that motion.

McAnally, of Rochester , could not be reached for comment. Her Valparaiso-based attorney, Anna Hearn, said she is happy with the verdict.

McAnally's co-workers started harassing her after she began giving the gay employee rides home from work, Hearn said.

"They called her (derogatory terms referencing homosexual women, including at least one sexually explicit term) ... there was speculation that someone urinated in her drink," Hearn said. "She spit it out and said it smelled like urine.

"McAnally claimed in court documents that the harassment drove her to seek mental health treatment for severe depression.

Gotsch awarded McAnally less than one-third of the $169,000 in damages she requested in her closing statements. The $50,873 included $25,000 in punitive damages, meant to punish Best Beef; $11,420 in compensatory damages, $6,239 in attorney fees, $4,305 in lost back pay; and $3,908 in prejudgment interest, which is meant to recoup interest on money a plaintiff would have had, absent a defendant's wrongdoing.

Best Beef's attorney, Christopher Potts of South Bend , could not be reached for comment. A woman who answered a local phone number listed for Best Beef referred The Tribune to an office in South Carolina . A voice mail left at that number, for "Best Beef of Carolina," an Arby's franchisee, was not returned.

Staff writer Jeff Parrott:
jparrott@sbtinfo.com
(574) 235-6320