Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:

A lawsuit filed by a former Village of Lincolnwood firefighter against the village and the private company that employed him will be allowed to continue, but the count filed against the village has been dropped, a federal district court judge wrote on Wednesday.

Joshua Weller alleged in the lawsuit that while he worked as a firefighter/paramedic in Lincolnwood for Paramedic Services of Illinois Inc. (PSI), he saw widespread discrimination against a female coworker.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division on Aug. 30, 2017 by Weller’s attorney, Daniel Zemans.

But the defendants, which include PSI, the village of Lincolnwood and “Jane and John Does 1-10,” filed a motion seeking to have the suit dismissed. Then on Jan. 18, Zemans asked to drop the portion of the suit against Lincolnwood, while keeping the portion against PSI.

In a written ruling filed Wednesday, Judge Charles Kocoras granted Lincolnwood’s and Zemans’ requests to dismiss the count against the village without prejudice. He agreed to dismiss one count against PSI, but denied PSI’s motion to dismiss six other counts filed against them in the lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, after Weller stood up to the mistreatment and, in a separate incident, reported a supervisor’s drug abuse, other men he worked with and male superiors responded by retaliating against him by harassing and eventually Weller was fired.

After reviewing the complaint “with due deference – and the lascivious, hostile nature of the firehouse portrayed therein – we find that Weller has sufficiently pled his gender discrimination causes of action,” Kocoras wrote.

Kocoras denied one count against PSI, that of intentional infliction of emotional distress, without prejudice, he wrote. The alleged harassment was “carried out for the exclusive purpose of gratifying the individual perpetrators in a manner readily distinguishable from any sort of business aim.”

In his complaint, Weller says he was employed by PSI starting in October 2010, and the company placed him in Lincolnwood in December 2015, where he worked until he was fired the following July. The north suburb is one of the few municipalities in Illinois to outsource firefighter staffing, according to village officials. Lincolnwood officials said outsourcing saves the village money on pensions and benefits for the workers.

Weller witnessed male coworkers calling his female coworker explicit vulgarities, describe her as “useless,” talk to her “brazenly” about her breasts, tell her “she should not try to seduce anyone at work,” and ask if she was sleeping with her coworkers, according to the complaint.

Weller said in his lawsuit that male co-workers called him the woman’s guard dog, spread rumors that he and the woman were having an affair, asked Weller if he had impregnated her, asked for videos of the two having sex and texted him pornographic images asking if “the images depicted the type of sexual activity” Weller and the woman engaged in.

Tags: harassment lawsuit filed against Lincolnwood Fire Department, Joshua Weller, Lincolnwood Fire Department, Paramedic Services of Illinois named in lawsuit

Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:

Joshua Weller alleged in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court on Aug. 30, 2017 that while he worked as a firefighter/paramedic in Lincolnwood, he saw widespread discrimination against a female coworker. After he stood up to the mistreatment, other men he worked with and male superiors responded by retaliating against him, harassing, and eventually firing him.

The defendants, which include Paramedic Services of Illinois (PSI), the village of Lincolnwood and “Jane and John Does 1-10,” filed a motion seeking to have the suit dismissed. On Jan. 18, Weller’s attorney asked to drop the portion of the suit against Lincolnwood, while keeping the portion against PSI. 

In his complaint, Weller says he was employed by PSI starting in October 2010, and the company placed him in Lincolnwood in December of 2015, where he worked until he was fired the following July. The woman at the center of the allegations in Weller’s lawsuit … no longer works for PSI.

“Mr. Weller quickly realized that, in the eyes of PSI coworkers and officers, (the female employee’s) only problem was that she was a woman in a fire department in which supervisors and coworkers thought it was okay for them to degrade and harass her on a regular basis,” the complaint reads.

“Faced with the choice of joining in the mistreatment of (the female firefighter) or treating her with the respect she deserved, Mr. Weller opted for the latter, and made it clear to his coworkers and supervisors their behavior was unacceptable,” the lawsuit says.

In addition, according to the complaint, Weller reported a superior’s drug abuse, one that caused him to fall asleep while in training and on duty, including while out on calls and began to nod off while assigned to drive a 7-year-old girl to the hospital in an ambulance. The superior also abandoned his crew inside a burning structure in which a floor collapsed according to Weller’s lawsuit.

Weller said in the lawsuit that “less than a month after [his] final complaint about the harassment of and retaliation against him … and just three days after he gave PSI the proof about [the superior’s] drug problem … PSI terminated [his] employment.” PSI told Weller he was being fired for violating a cell phone policy and for violating HIPAA. 

Attorneys for the village and PSI filed motions in December to dismiss the suit. One motion argued the defendant, who is a man, could not have been discriminated on the basis of his gender, therefore the suit fails to meet the pleading standard of gender discrimination. The other motion to dismiss notes that Lincolnwood officials wrote a letter dated Aug. 30, 2016, requesting PSI to reassign Weller to an organization other than the Village of Lincolnwood Fire Department.

 

thanks Dan

Tags: harassment lawsuit filed against Lincolnwood Fire Department, Joshua Weller, Lincolnwood Fire Department, Paramedic Services of Illinois named in lawsuit