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Here's an interesting tidbit recently reported in the Chicago Tribune. On Wednesday, January 21, 2004, a federal jury in Chicago awarded $500,000 to a former local government employee who claimed that she was being sexually harassed by her boss. Well that hardly seems newsworthy you might say. After all, sexual harassment by superiors is hardly unusual. But there's an interesting twist in this case. The individual who was doing the alleged harassing was, at that time, responsible for investigating...can you guess? Yep, he was the chief investigator or sexual harassment claims. Boy, talk about ironic, huh?

In any event, the jury awarded $400,000 in punitive damages and $100,000 in compensatory damages. The defendant vehemently denied the harassment and the plaintiff's mother(who also worked for him, insert your own joke here)denied she had ever seen anything improper. In addition, the defendant testified that although mom was much more productive than her daughter, he fired mom and retained daughter. Hey, I know what you are thinking. Why would you keep the bad employee and fire the good one? Not so fast. The defendant had an answer ...he testified he didn't have the heart to fire a single mom. What a guy.

The plaintiff testified that after she rejected sexual advances, her work duties were minimized and ultimately she was cleaning the fax machine and shredding paper. Well that makes perfect sense. Remember, she wasn't very productive. Her mom was the dynamo. But wait, they fired mom. Wow. Lawsuits sure are confusing sometimes.