Evaluate an Employee Discrimination Claim and Prepare a Video Presentation Summarizing your Legal Research
Employment Discrimination
There are four elements to a tort: duty, breach, causation, and damages. The burden of proof is the obligation of the party asserting the claim to prove a prima facie case. A prima facie case simply means that the party provides sufficient evidence to prove the claim. Therefore, in tort the plaintiff must prove a prima facie case establishing that the defendant had a duty to the plaintiff, they breached that duty and caused compensable injury to the plaintiff. Once a plaintiff has established a prima facie case the burden shifts to the defendant to disprove one or more of the elements in the plaintiff’s prima facie case or otherwise provide a justifiable or affirmative defense.
An affirmative defense must be pleaded in a timely manner. A justifiable or affirmative defense is pled when the defendant admits causing injury but introduces evidence to prove that their action was legally justifiable. Examples of a justifiable or affirmative defense include self-defense, entrapment, and insanity. A defendant must plead the law and facts establishing a justifiable or affirmative defense as they would in a complaint.
There is one affirmative defense that cannot be waived, that is lack of subject matter jurisdiction. As you may recall, subject matter jurisdiction is the court’s authority to hear and make judgments that are binding on all parties. If a court does not have subject matter jurisdiction any and all rulings will not be legally enforceable against one or more party.
Be sure to review this week’s resources carefully. You are expected to apply the information from these resources when you prepare your assignments.
This week’s books and resources:
http://pointfirstwriting.com/legal_memo/write_memo/issue_statements.html
Assignment:
You work in the Greenwood Police Department in the Human Resources Department; your supervisor asks that you look into a claim of employment discrimination made by Lt. Tom Jones. You look into the matter and discover the following information:
In January 2012, Chief of Police Brian Williams, of the Greenwood Police Department, announced his retirement. Lt. Tom Jones, who has been with the Greenwood Police Department for 29 years, applied for the position. He was the department’s only Lieutenant, the second-highest rank.
A three-member commission controls hiring and promoting. Between 1990 and 2012, the commission promoted internally, never seeking outside applications for vacancies. This time, the commissioners, recruited both internally and externally and selected four finalists, including Jones and an external candidate, Detective Thompson.
At the time of the application, Jones was 51 years old and Thompson was 38. Jones had an Associate’s degree in law enforcement, and he had completed all professional development training for his position. Thompson had served with the Appleton Police Department for 18 years, reaching the rank of Detective. He had a bachelor’s degree in criminal law.
The commission’s protocol for hiring the Chief was to score three criteria: weighted years of service, training and employment, and an interview. The weighted-years-of-service score counted the candidate’s actual years of police service with double credit for time as Sergeant and triple for Lieutenant.
The training-and-employment score was subjective, with a maximum of 20 points awarded for specialized training, education points awarded for specialized training, education or prior employment relevant to the job of Chief of Police.
As for the interview points, the commissioners rated each candidate’s appearance, greeting, presence, and closure on a scale of 1 to 5, and each candidate’s answers to eight interview questions on a scale of 1 to 10. The maximum interview score was 100 points. The maximum total score for a finalist was about 185.
Before the interview, Jones had a service score of 65—29 years of service, including 8 years as Sergeant and 14 years as Lieutenant—the highest of the finalists. He received 9 out of 20 on training-and-employment, the lowest of the finalists. Thompson received a service score of 28—18 years of service, including 5 years as Detective, which the commission equated to Lieutenant. Thompson scored 15 out of 20 for his training-and-employment, the highest of the finalists. Before the interviews, Jones led with a score of 74; Thompson was second with 43 points.
Each commissioner gave Thompson perfect scores for his interview. Each commissioner gave Jones an identical score of 69. Jones and Thompson thus each had 143 points after the interview, placing them in a tie for the position. The commission hired Thompson as the new Chief of Police for Greenwood.
Your supervisor advises that she won’t be meeting with the attorneys until three weeks from now to discuss this matter. In the meantime, she would like to know if Lt. Jones’ discrimination allegation has any merit.
Please research and analyze the legal and factual issues in this case. Please draft a legal memorandum discussing the merits of Lt. Jones’ case.
Your legal memorandum should reflect the legal research and writing skills that you have developed in this program along with what you have learned about civil actions.
References: Please use 4 legal resources in your analysis
In addition, please prepare a video presentation with Written transcript for the administrative staff of the Greenwood Police Department. In your presentation outline the ADEA and summarize the findings of your legal research and analysis of Lt. Jones claim of age discrimination against the City of Greenwood.
Length: 5-10 minutes
References: Please use a minimum of 2 legal resources in preparing your video presentation.
Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers
Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.
Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS
Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?
Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.
We write plagiarism Free Content
Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.
Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.
