Are these grounds for a lawsuit?

[Anonymous 1]

I know someone who is being sued by a former employee and I want to know if you think these are grounds for a lawsuit. I am putting her reasons for suing as well as the response by the employer.

1. Plaintiff found out a different employee with the same job title is being paid more. The employee making more money happens to be 10 years younger. Plaintiff claims they are being paid less due to age discrimination. The employer responds that salaries are negotiable and the employee making more money negotiated a higher salary. Employer responds that out of 26 employees, 23 of them are in the same age range as the Plaintiff (early 50s). 3 employees are at least 10 years younger.

2. Plaintiff claims the employer is discriminating against her because of her gender. She cites a page out of the policies and procedures manual which shows the steps to success in her job title. The page shows a graph of people moving up the corporate ladder. The people are all men. The employer responds that the company employs more women than men with 15 women and 11 men. In the plaintiff's same job title, there are 2 men and 4 women.

3. Plaintiff claims that she was fired for refusing to sign an acknowledgment that she had received a copy of the company's new policies and procedures manual. She refused to sign the acknowledgement because there were typos and missing page numbers in the manual. She says the administrative assistant threatened to not provide lunch at a company meeting for anyone who had not signed the acknowledgement. The employee responds that she was fired due to yelling and screaming at the boss and her manager and that the typos and missing page numbers are not of material importance because she was only asked to sign an acknowledgement that she had received the manual, not that she had read it or agreed to it, and that the manual did not include anything pertaining to the employee agreement or employment contract which is a separate document. The employer says that the lunch for the company meeting had been ordered and paid for the day before the meeting and that the food was already being passed out when the acknowledgements were being turned in.

[Slimshandy]

No…

#3 is ridiculous, that’ll get thrown out on the first day…


And on #1+ 2, if the employer can show/ attest to a better job performance by those who were paid more/promoted they’ll get thrown out also and the employer can sue for their lost legal fees.

[Anonymous 2]

That's all ridiculous

[mrsjules79]

What an absolute waste of time for all parties involved. NONE of that is lawsuit worthy and I hope it gets thrown right out of court.

[jas]

No

[Traci_Momof2]

My husband, who's professional experience is in employment and the laws that go with it, said this lawsuit won't go anywhere. He used the words "petty" and "reaching for straws".

I can understand feeling rather peeved about #1. Basically the same thing happened to me once. I had been with the company for about 10 years when my manager hired a new person in our department. He was pretty fresh out of college but must have been really good at negotiation because I found out after the fact that he was hired at a salary of 60% more than my salary, and he was supposed to be pretty much the same level as me. I didn't find out until after I had already left the company a couple years later for completely unrelated reasons but I can't deny that the news still stung. Funny thing is he only stayed with the company for about 1.5 years before moving on so I really hope the company felt like they got their money's worth with him.
I felt slighted upon learning that news, but it was definitely not worth suing the company over.