The firm successfully defended national trucking company CRST Van Expedited, Inc., in a landmark harassment matter brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC sued in 2007, claiming that the company intentionally tolerated a practice and pattern of sexual harassment of its women drivers. CRST argued that the EEOC failed to show evidence of its claims. An Iowa federal trial court dismissed 268 of the 270 claims; on this day in 2012, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed all but two of the individual claims. According to a Law360 account of the dismissal, the majority ruling of the Eighth Circuit “held that the EEOC had not tried to ascertain the size of its putative class of employees, and that as a result it had not tried to investigate the claims of the 67 women during its investigation of the sexual harassment charge — brought by a single CRST employee — that led to the litigation.” Two years later, the victory  was capped when a judge awarded CRST $4.6 million in attorneys fees, believed to be the largest of its kind in an EEOC case. John Mathias led the team that included Carla Rozycki, James Malysiak, Sally Sears Coder, Richard Campbell, Emma Sullivan, Ashley Schumacher and Christine Bowman.

CATEGORIES: 2005-present, CRST, EEOC, Harassment