New York City Employment Lawyer

Sexual Harassment is defined as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and any verbal or nonverbal conduct of a sexual nature. There are two types of sexual harassment; quid pro quo and Hostile Environment.

Quid pro quo is when a benefit is directly attached to an employee accepting or submitting to unwelcome sexual advances or favors. If a supervisor were to promise a raise to an employee if that employee would go on a date with the supervisor, this would be quid pro quo harassment. If this type of harassment occurs, not only would the supervisor be liable, but the employer of the supervisor would be held accountable as well. This basically means, “I’ll give you this if you give me that.”

The other type of sexual harassment is Hostile Environment. Either a work or learning environment becomes “hostile” when unwelcome verbal or physical behavior of a prohibited nature is severe and persistent enough to affect the persons work or learning abilities. The activity has to be offensive enough to be included as “hostile” behavior of any kind. This includes someone being subject to sexual natured comments, distasteful materials, and unwelcome physical contact of any kind. For most general cases, there has to be more than one incident to make the event illegal harassment. If the case is severe enough, however, it would constitute the event to be illegal. For the overall general cases, it takes repeated action of the violation in order to make the environment offensive beyond the point of a “reasonable person.”

If you feel you have been the victim of sexual harassment, please contact the New York City employment lawyers of Cary Kane LLP at 212-868-6300 to discuss the details of your case and to determine your legal options.