Allied Security Guard Settles Sexual Harassment Suit
Los Angeles CA March 13 2024
A woman has settled her lawsuit against Allied Universal Security Services LLC and HRL Laboratories LLC in which she alleged that the HRL emergency operations director who hired her in 2021 repeatedly harassed her sexually, including telling her, “You stole my heart since the first day I saw you coming in for an interview wearing your Allied hat.”
The plaintiff is identified only as Jane Doe in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit in which she also maintained that she was subjected to retaliation when she complained. She contended she was jointly employed by Allied and HRL.
On Monday, Doe’s attorneys filed court papers with Judge Kerry Bensinger stating that the case was resolved, but no terms were divulged. The same judge in January had granted a defense motion to have an arbitrator decide the case instead of a jury. The judge noted that Doe’s claims accrued before March 2022, when President Joseph R. Biden signed the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021.
In their court papers filed before the hearing on arbitration, Allied Universal lawyers denied Doe’s allegations and cited multiple defenses, including violation by the plaintiff of the statute of limitations. The Allied attorneys also maintained that the company “took immediate and appropriate efforts to quickly and thoroughly investigate” Doe’s claims and that the lawsuit should be dismissed.
Doe filed her suit last April 7, alleging sexual harassment, failure to prevent harassment, gender discrimination, sexual battery, retaliation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She alleged the HRL emergency operations director “abused his position of authority to physically, sexually and verbally abuse” Doe, an Allied Universal security guard.
The HRL operations director sent Doe to abandoned and private spaces at HRL to sexually assault her, according to the suit, which further alleged that the director’s behavior “was so openly displayed that he routinely made sexual advances on the employee messenger system and through the recorded telephone line, and others observed him regularly stalking Ms. Doe on the monitor.”
The defendants’ alleged failure to curb the director’s harassing conduct emboldened him, according to the suit.
In April 2021, the director told Doe, “You stole my heart since the first day I saw you coming in for an interview wearing your Allied hat,” the suit alleged.
HRL and Allied “failed to remedy or discipline” the operations director and instead gave him a “slap on the wrist” by putting him on paid leave for the first few months following Doe’s complaints, the suit stated.
The defendants began retaliating against Doe the day after she filed a sexual harassment complaint, including assigning her on some occasions to be on duty outside in rain, though this task was not a part of her January 2022 promotion to lead officer, the suit stated.
This alleged backlash lasted more than three months, when the defendants in April 2022 gave her the increase in responsibilities for the promotion that she had already earned three months prior, according to the suit.