June 10, 2011
Sometimes, when representing multiple individuals in a single suit, lawyers can begin to think of those individuals as a single entity – the group – rather than a collection of individuals. In Ellis v. CCA of Tennessee LLC, ___ F.3d ___ (7th Cir. 2011), Cause No. 10-2768, the Court warned about the dangers of doing this at footnote 2.
As we noted at the outset, plaintiffs unhelpfully treated themselves as one person throughout much of their briefing, just as they did before the district court. In the context of a hostile work environment claim, secondhand harassment is less severe than firsthand harassment. For the sake of our ease only, we have generally indulged plaintiffs’ fiction that the nurses were effectively a single entity, but we underscore that the briefing gambit should be avoided by litigants.
Brad A. Catlin
Price Waicukauski & Riley, LLC
Learn more about Brad and contact us
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Price Waicukauski & Riley, LLC
Learn more about Brad and contact us
Download a copy of this article here
