Dunn v. Washington County Hospital, 2005 U.S.App. LEXIS 24660 (7th Cir. 2005)

The employee, a nurse, alleged that the chief surgeon made conditions miserable for her and other women on the staff. The lower court assumed that women were subjected to worse conditions than men but dismissed the case since the perpetrator was not employed by the hospital. On appeal, the Seventh Circuit ruled that an employer could be liable for sex discrimination of its employees by an independent contractor. It went on to state that the ability to control actor, whether it is an employee, an independent contractor, or a customer, plays no part in the analysis of Title VII claims due to liability being direct rather than derivative. 

The Court then uses an analogy between the independent contractor and a macaw bird to demonstrate why the hospital is liable. The analogy is as follows: A patient keeps a macaw in the room which attacks women but not men. The hospital was aware of the situation but failed to correct the situation. The hospital would be responsible for failing to take corrective action, regardless that macaw was not an employee nor could it control the macaw's actions, since the hospital allowed the women to be subjected to inferior terms and conditions of employment.

The case was remanded to the lower court for further proceedings to determine if the employees allegations of sex discrimination are actionable under Title VII. 

Mahoney v. Industrial Comm’n, 2006 Ill. LEXIS 13 (2006)

The Illinois Supreme Court held that in order to determine whether the Illinois Workers' Compensation Commission ("IWCC") has jurisdiction to hear claims that arise out of accidents outside of Illinois, the sole factor is where was the contract for employment entered into. The employee in this case was hired in Chicago, Illinois by United Airlines in 1969. The employee worked in Illinois until 1993 when he requested and was granted a transfer to the employer's Orlando, Florida facility. There was no lapse of time from the employee's last day of work at the Chicago facility and the first day of work at the Orlando facility. 

The employee purchased a home in Florida and continues to work in that state. Additionally, he pays Florida state income taxes and possesses a Florida drivers license. The employee paid no taxes in Illinois and rarely returned to Illinois. The employee suffered two work-related accidents in Florida in 1999 and 2001. He received medical treatment in Florida and also received temporary total disability payments under the Florida Workers' Compensation Act. The Court ruled that the employee may pursue his claims in Illinois given that he was originally hired in Illinois. 

The Illinois Supreme Court distinguished the facts in this case from the facts in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Industrial Common, 79 Ill. 2d 425 (1980). In Youngstown, the employee was not allowed to bring his claims in Illinois despite being originally hired in Illinois. The employee in Youngstown was hired, laid-off, and rehired at an out-of-state facility by the same employer. The Court reasoned that the lay-off broke the chain of employment. Thus, a new contract for employment came into existence when the employee was hired out-of-state at a facility outside of Illinois and the no jurisdiction existed in Illinois courts. 

Doe v. XYC Corp., 2005 WL 3527015 (N.J.Super.A.D. 2005)

In this case, an employee secretly videotaped and photographed his 10-year old daughter in the nude and transmitted the pictures over the Internet through a workplace computer. The employer's network administrator learned that the employee had been accessing what the supervisor believed were pornographic websites. However, he was instructed to discontinue monitoring the employee's internet usage because the employer had a policy prohibiting such monitoring. Upon learning of the publication of the pictures on the internet, the employee's daughter, through her mother, filed suit against her father's employer, claiming that it failed to take appropriate action when it learned that her father was accessing internet pornography at work. The trial court granted the employer's motion for a summary judgment on the basis that the employee was not under the employer's control at the time the pictures were taken, and the employer had no duty to monitor the private communications of employees at work. The New Jersey Appellate Court reversed on the basis that the employer had the ability and right to monitor the employee's internet activities. It ruled that the employer is liable because it knew or should have known that the employee was using the office computer to access child pornography.