Fire Law Blog Fire Service and Public Safety Legal Issues Blog by Curt Varone
A female firefighter with the Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service has filed suit claiming she has been sexually harassed and bullied by male firefighters. Sandra Tilke alleges the treatment began in 2002 after she refused to join a strike.
It is the second sexual harassment suit that Tilke has filed against the fire department. The first suit was settled in 2006 on undisclosed terms. She returned to work in 2006 after three and on half years of sick leave, but over the following two years she worked a total of just 13 shifts before resigning in May of 2008.
Tilke claims she cannot return to work because of the psychological trauma she has had to endure. She claims she has experienced issues with anxiety, depression and post traumatic stress disorder.
In her earlier suit, she alleged that firefighters made a fake camera and pointed it toward the women’s room as part of the campaign against her. The department said the camera was an obvious fake made from a cardboard box, and was used around the station as a joke. In this case it was positioned outside the women’s room as a reminder to the men not to use it. Tilke had complained that men were using the women’s room in her absence.
Tilke’s latest suit alleges unfair dismissal, sex discrimination, breach of contract and an action under the disability discrimination act. It follows a series of appeals centered around her resignation in which she alleged she was “constructively terminated”.
As in the US, a constructive termination occurs when an employer’s wrongful conduct is so outrageous that an employee who resigns is legally considered to have been fired. The basis for her claim of constructive termination centered on two emails that were exchanged between the fire chief and union officials in 2006. In December, 2010 the appellate court ruled that the time between the emails in 2006 and her resignation in 2008 was too long to be used as the basis to allege constructive termination.
No word on when the sexual harassment and disability discrimination case will be coming to trial.
