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Can you be successfully sued based on someone's feeling that you discriminated against them, without any hard evidence?
Oh lawdy, I worked as a paralegal for quite a few years.
If you want a real answer, you'd have to ask a real lawyer, not us unqualified, non-expert cunts.
Short answer, you can't pursue any legal action without some type of evidence. It would get tossed. However, you'd be surprised at what constitutes evidence in this type of case. Things like the discrimination victims own journaled experiences count, even though they are totally subjective. If they were to hire a good lawyer, anything is up for grabs, all e-mail correspondence, all interactions w/ HR, office jokes, just everything. They would be trying to establish a pattern to show a hostile work environment & you would be surprised what "counts" as evidence. It's all about trying to paint a big picture that shows a pattern of behavior.
What's to prevent someone from making things up and writing them down in their "journal"? There is no way to verify when it was written.
There is nothing to stop them.
First of all, this would be a civil suit, not criminal, so the rules are very different.
All of the evidence is "circumstantial" in criminal court terms. It's all about establishing a narrative. Of course, this person's account would have to be corroborated with evidence- like e-mail correspondence or recorded conversations, etc.
My point was that this type of stuff is allowed in court during a civil case. The rules of evidence are way less stringent, so stuff like a journal about how the employee FEELS- that stuff is admissible. The burden of proof is still on them, but there's a fairly open door for what constitutes proof & that can involve a lot of things you wouldn't expect.
Listen, if you are really concerned about being sued, you need to speak to a real lawyer. Call around & see if you can just get a 1 time fee consultation & move forward from there if they take any legal action.
Actually, I'd be able to give you some more details if I knew more about your situation. Are you the employer? Is this your own business? Is it a large or small company? Etc
I'm a landlord. My tenants are gay which I don't have a problem with. But the terrible property manager I hired to rent out the place didn't bother doing any kind of background check. He also had a big mouth and made stupid comments about their sexual orientation. I fired him after a few months.
The tenants leave trash around the front of the house, never clean up their dog's shit in the yard. They have a bad attitude and mention their friend who's an attorney whenever my new property manager talks to them about complying with the lease and cleaning up.
I want them out when the one year lease ends so my new property manager can find decent people. I'm worried they'll retaliate with a lawsuit when that happens. I live in a very liberal state.
Oh ok, you should be fine. I assumed you were an employer.
They have no legal leg to stand on here, especially since you fired this property manager that made discriminatory comments.
Just keep a record of everything they are doing to trash the property (photos of outside) & you should be totally fine since you have a legitimate reason to want them to move out. It's not like you're even evicting them before the lease is up.
Unless they have some pretty compelling evidence of discrimination- sounds like they don't, they won't have the ability to sue you.
It's very hard to prove. They're going to think it's more likely that the person you thought was discriminating against you didnt like you because of your personality and not because of your race.