U.S. Appeals Court Rejects Most Claims Made by EEOC in Action Against CRST

A federal appeals court recently rejected nearly all of the sweeping allegations the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission made in a 2007 lawsuit that accused CRST Van Expedited Inc. of being responsible for “severe and pervasive” sexual harassment in its new-driver training program.

In its ruling last month, the court found that, after the EEOC filed its lawsuit on behalf of three female CRST driver trainees, the agency continued to expand the class of harassed drivers to 270 women without sufficiently investigating their complaints.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not find a pattern of discrimination by the company. However, the court did leave open the right of two of the female drivers to continue to press their allegations in U.S. District Court.

The ruling noted that CRST has an “open-door policy” that encourages employees to report harassment to supervisors, provides toll-free phone numbers for fleet managers, has a Qualcomm device placed in every truck to transmit harassment allegation messages and has a detailed plan of action to immediately remove a trainee from a truck if she is being harassed.

“We are pleased with the ruling and will continue to defend the company in court,” said Eric Baker, CRST’s general counsel.

EEOC spokeswoman Justine Lisser declined comment on the ruling.

The EEOC lawsuit began with an allegation by a single female trainee driver who said she was sexually harassed while she was teamed with a male trainer during a 28-day over-the-road training trip.

When informed of the complaint in December 2005, CRST officials said they conducted an internal investigation of the driver’s allegations and similar allegations by two other drivers and, as a result of the probe, denied it discriminated against the drivers, according to court records.

In the months that followed, the EEOC sent several supplemental requests for information to CRST on sexual harassment complaints by two other drivers. Seven months later, the EEOC sent a request for “a copy of all other charges of discrimination that CRST has received in the past five years from any government agency that alleges sexual harassment,” court documents said.

The EEOC also demanded “the name, gender, home address and home telephone number” of all employees that were trained by two driver trainers who were accused of sexual harassment and detailed contact information for all of the company’s dispatchers and female drivers who began working after January 2005.

Later in 2008, after it filed its lawsuit, the EEOC sent more than 2,700 letters to former CRST female employees to solicit their participation in the lawsuit. In its ruling, the appeals court harshly criticized the EEOC for what it called a “fishing expedition.”

“The EEOC’s litigation strategy was untenable: CRST faced a continuously moving target of allegedly aggrieved persons, the risk of never-ending discovery and indefinite continuance of trial,” the court said.

Although the EEOC enjoys “significant latitude” to investigate claims of discrimination, the court said the agency may not use legal discovery in a case “as a fishing expedition to uncover more violations.”

In a dissenting opinion, one of the appeals court’s judges wrote that the Feb. 22 ruling, which generally upheld a lower court decision, set a new standard for workplace class-action lawsuits in the Circuit Court that would require the EEOC to investigate the merits of every member of its class or risk having their lawsuits dismissed.

“Under this standard, em-ployers can avoid disclosure to the EEOC of complaining workers while the Commission is conducting its investigation and conciliation, then reveal the names during court-ordered discovery and seek dismissal of the entire case on the ground of inadequate presuit efforts by the EEOC,” Judge Diana Murphy wrote in her dissent.