Tag Archive for 'lawsuits'

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lindsay lohan’s assistant is scared for her

Published on November 11, 2009 in Assistants in the News and Celebrity Assistant Soapbox. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Jenni Muro, Lindsay Lohan’s long-suffering assistant/manager (who reportedly finally quit this year) has been through a lot: she was there the night that Lindsay’s second assistant quit and LiLo went on a high-speed pursuit, and she once saved her boss from drowning in an overflowing bathtub. Really, the woman should be getting combat pay.

Now, though, another member of the Lohan family is making Jenni’s life miserable – Lindsay’s famewhore dad, Michael. Michael, who claims to want to help his drug-addled daughter but is happy to collect money from tabloid programs in the meantime, released a voicemail that Jenni left him. In the message, Jenni says, “I get a 5% commission on this entire TV show and it’s sick and disgusting and I’m here and I give up my boyfriend and my dog and my parents and my new place in LA and everything so that your daughter doesn’t kill herself, ok?”

Yikes. TMZ reports that Jenni plans to send Michael a cease and desist letter and might potentially sue.

boss allegedly tries to have assistant killed

Published on November 11, 2009 in Horror Stories. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Workplace harassment is no laughing matter. A current lawsuit going on in London absolutely made my blood boil:

Jordan Wimmer, a 29-year-old financier who earned more than $1 million (Cdn) last year, is in the midst of $7 million suit against Mark Lowe. Lowe, 59, is the principal at hedge fund Nomos Capital and a legend in London investment circles. He owns a castle in France and has a reported $200-million fortune.

Testifying in front of a London employment tribunal this week, Wimmer accused Lowe of peppering her with sexual innuendo, making her watch lap dances and forcing her to share office space with prostitutes he passed off as relatives.

Let’s read that last sentence one more time, shall we? Forcing her to share office space with prostitutes he passed off as relatives. OK, there are so many weird things about that sentence. First of all, why would the prostitutes need offices? If they were, uh, working as prostitutes then they probably would have needed bedrooms, not offices. If they were doing their work in the office, then did Ms. Wimmer have to watch them have sex? That is some fucked up shit right there.

Wimmer said the poisonous atmosphere ruined her health. She told the tribunal that she was speaking slowly because of medication she was taking for depression. She claims to suffer from bulimia and anxiety as a result of working at Nomos.

I don’t know either of these people personally and had never heard of them before reading this article. That said, I almost always believe an underling over a boss, because it’s much harder for an underling to get away with lying in a corporate environment. This is one lawsuit I will definitely be following.

bad bosses hurt the economy

Published on September 11, 2009 in Polls. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Having an evil boss doesn’t just hurt morale and your will to live – it’s also bad for the economy. A new study from USC’s School of Business finds that bad bosses cost the US economy about $300 billion a year. That is a lot of money. Where does it come from?

  • Lawsuits – wrongful termination, harassment, creating a hostile work environment… you name it.
  • Lost productivity – people bitching about their bosses, hiding from them, crying in the bathroom, etc., instead of working
  • Retention/hirings and firings – employees are more likely to leave jobs with unpleasant working environments (note: the Evil Empire went through about ten assistants a year. That is a lot of time devoted to reading resumes, arranging interviews, making offers, training new people, and the like.)
  • Morale – not just unhappy employees, but if clients, vendors, or customers get wind of how unhappy a place is for workers, they are 80 percent less likely to continue their business there

In other words, you now have a really strong case for getting your boss fired. Good luck!

tyra’s assistant lawsuit

Published on September 3, 2009 in Assistants in the News and Celebrity Assistant Soapbox. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

It’s been an interesting few weeks for ex-assistant lawsuits, hasn’t it? First Patricia Heaton, and now newly-minted Emmy winner Tyra Banks. TMZ, who apparently has a staffer permanently camped out at the Los Angeles County courthouse, has obtained a copy of a lawsuit against Tyra by one of her former assistants, Richard Thomas:

Thomas is suing for back wages plus a little extra. The complaint says Thomas wants the money for “services rendered as assistant and advisor.”

Exactly what kind of “advising” was he doing? Did he just tell her which of the two wigs she was choosing between looked prettier on her? And doesn’t $5K seem like kind of a small lawsuit? This does not seem to be as juicy as the Patricia Heaton lawsuit, but you never know.

woman fired for bad email manners

Published on September 2, 2009 in Junk Drawer. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

While the internet is kind of like the Wild West in terms of what’s allowed and what’s not, there is one rule I think everyone can agree on: don’t use all caps. IT LOOKS LIKE YELLING. Anyway, one company decided not only to take a firm stance against all-caps, but to show no mercy to people who wrote that way. Vicki Walker, an employee of ProCare Health in New Zealand, was let go from her job after sending out an all-staff email written with the caps lock key on.

Walker sued ProCare for wrongful dismissal, and won, getting a settlement. Though her email annoyed coworkers, she pointed out that ProCare did not have an approved company style guide. Even though her all-caps bothered people, there was no specific protocol on how emails were supposed to look. I’m sure that was ProCare’s #1 agenda item as soon as the lawsuit ended.

Do you think an all-caps email is a good reason to fire someone? I’d say no, but five or six in a row from the same person might convince me otherwise.

restaurant owner fires pregnant assistant

Published on August 9, 2009 in Assistants in the News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

When bosses say they want their personal assistants to be available at any time, some of them really mean it. Jennifer LeRoy, who owns the popular New York restaurant Tavern On the Green, allegedly fired assistant Jamie Mora just a week after Mora told her boss she was pregnant. The New York Post reports that Mora is now suing LeRoy for back wages and damages.

The high-strung heiress hired Mora to handle her personal and business affairs in 2004 and to make herself “available to Ms. LeRoy 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout her tenure at Tavern,” according to court papers.

Who knows whether Mora could have worked during her pregnancy? I mean, Katherine Heigl’s assistant managed to fetch her boss Coke Zero while heavily pregnant, so there does seem to be a precedent.

no job? sue your college!

Published on August 5, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Almost every college has a career center, although whether the center is any good totally depends on the place you go. Mine was mediocre – they mostly just had books of sample resumes and cover letters that you could copy and an online database of internships in the area. When it came time to actually find and keep a job, I was on my own.

One recent graduate, New Yorker Trina Thompson, is suing her alma mater, Monroe College in the Bronx, claiming that they didn’t do enough to help her find employment when she finished school. Thompson graduated with a degree in information systems with a 2.7 GPA this April and has not been able to find a job since then. She’s suing the school for $70,000, the amount she spent on tuition.

I, for one, find Thompson’s lawsuit pretty absurd. For one thing, she’s been looking for a job for less than four months. It took me about eight to land my first full-time gig, and that was in a way better economic situation than the one we’re in now. Almost no one walks into a job the day that they graduate from college, and that’s why they should save money and plan ahead for the time they’re going to be unemployed. It amazes me that Thompson thinks she deserves to get her tuition back after such a short period of time. Even if her college career center totally sucked ass and wasn’t helpful at all, what exactly has she been doing? How many interviews has she been on? I sent out several hundred resumes before even landing my first interview – it takes patience and a lot of hard work, not giving up after a couple of months and demanding your money back. I bet her ulterior motive is to get her name in the news and hope someone offers her a job after the barrage of publicity. Ugh.

rebecca white vs debbie rowe

Published on July 17, 2009 in Celebrity Assistant Soapbox. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Just when I thought former Naomi Campbell assistant Rebecca White – who decided to announce to the world she’d seen Heath Ledger do drugs with Naomi just hours after Ledger’s death – she’s back in the news again. This time, she’s attached herself to the biggest story in the news, the death of Michael Jackson. TMZ reports that White is being sued by Jackson’s ex-wife (and mom of his two older kids), Debbie Rowe. White appeared last night on the tabloid TV show EXTRA and spoke about conversations she allegedly had with Rowe.

In a defamation lawsuit filed today, Rowe claims White defamed her when she went on EXTRA and said she has an email from Debbie saying, “Do I want the kids? Hell no. Does it look good for me to ask for them? Absolutely.”

Rowe claims the emails are bogus.

And, Rowe claims, White is like Zelig, surfacing in a number of high-profile scandals. The suit alleges White claimed to have been a personal assistant for Naomi Campbell back in 2001 and made allegations Campbell forced her to smuggle drugs.

Regardless what I may think about Debbie Rowe, I can’t help but think she has a point about Rebecca White. White does have an ability to try and get herself in the news whenever there’s a celebrity death scandal, and that reeks of insincerity.

assistant accuses CEO of rape

Published on June 9, 2009 in Assistants in the News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

An employee of Margarete Steiff GmbH, a German-based toymaker (whose best-known product are cute, cuddly teddy bears like the one at right) is suing her former boss, CEO Martin Frechen, of rape. Jane Collins, who used to be Frechen’s personal assistant and has since been promoted to assistant US marketing manager, is suing Frechen and the company for $80 million. She alleges that while she was Frechen’s assistant, he repeatedly sexually assaulted her over a five year period.

While this story is horrible and I commend Ms. Collins for coming out about what happened to her, my first question was why does she still work for the company? Sadly, she, like many others, felt trapped in her job and desperately needed the money.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Collins, a 32-year-old mother of two, said she didn’t go to the police about the alleged rape “because I was afraid I would lose my job if I did.” She said she has continued to work at Steiff because she needs the job, and because it pays better than similar positions elsewhere.

In the interview, Ms. Collins claimed that she wasn’t able to escape. “He’s six four and very strong, and I’m five seven,” she said. The complaint alleges that during the assault, Ms. Collins repeatedly told Mr. Frechen to stop and he responded by saying that this would be their “last time together,” and that “it is OK.”

This story absolutely disgusts me, and I am willing to bet that for every Jane Collins who has the courage to speak out there are many more who still say nothing because they’re afraid for their jobs. Another defendant named in the suit is another executive who Collins says she went to about the harrassment and who did nothing. Perhaps that’s the scariest part of all – when she finally did go to someone in a position of authority at the company, that person did nothing.

I wish Jane Collins all the best of luck with her suit and hope that justice will be served.

evil boss alert: victoria principal

Published on May 22, 2009 in Assistants in the News and Celebrity Assistant Soapbox. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Perhaps this is what comes of having been a beleaguered assistant, but I think we should judge people by how they treat their inferiors – in the cases of celebrities, we should judge them by how they treat their employees. And while this story is about a maid instead of a personal assistant, I think it is safe to say that actress Victoria Principal sucks as a person.

The former Dallas star is being sued by her former housekeeper Maribel Banegas. Banegas claims that she suffered lots of abuse while working for Principal. She claims that when she asked her boss for outstanding wages that were owed to her, Principal pulled a gun on her. She says that when she came back from walking the dog, Principal thought she had taken too long and began screaming at her.

For what it’s worth, Principal is countersuing, claiming that Banegas was abusing the dog, and that she’d been hired from a temp agency and had only worked three days, thus meaning she hadn’t had time to accumulate back wages. Also for what it’s worth, I almost never believe the celebrity in cases like this, but I admit again to being biased. Usually they have enough money and influence to get people to shut up and go away, but luckily this one is going to trial instead of being hushed up.