LITIGATION PREVENTION

The truth is that many of the employment discrimination suits coming to court today could have been avoided. Particularly the lawsuits that follow a reduction in force ("RIF").

When people are let go, lawsuits alleging age, race or gender discrimination soon follow. And - too often - when plaintiffs' statistical expert submits his or her report, management is genuinely surprised. Surprised because they thought the selection procedures they used were objective. Surprised because they thought they had built in every reasonable safeguard. And from our point of view, surprised because they're seeing these statistical results for the first time. That should never happen.

Proper statistical pre-testing takes the element of surprise out of the RIF process. We have helped manage many reductions in force. How? It's simple. Before any pink slips go out, we determine whether or not the RIF you're planning will provide statistical support for a discrimination charge. We can't tell you who will sue. But we can tell you whether the RIF list you've put together will or will not support their case if they do.

The Supreme Court has clearly specified the statistical criteria for a judgment of discrimination. In two landmark cases - Castaneda v. Partida and U.S. v. Hazelwood School District the Supreme Court ad criteria for an inference of employment discrimination. To prevail, plaintiff must demonstrate that the disparity or disproportion complained of is at least "two standard deviations" in width. Working with you, we run the required "two standard deviation" tests on the RIF list before you finalize it.

If the list as is indicates adverse impact, you can amend it. We will then re-run the statistical tests on the new list to ensure that no "two standard deviation" problems remain. Or you can proceed with the RIF as planned. With advance knowledge of potential problems, you have time to document the objective business criteria on which your decisions were based.

The process is simple. First we meet with you to review your plans and goals for the RIF. For example, we need to know whether the RIF will be company-wide or limited to particular job groups, departments, divisions or facilities. Next we arrange with your human resources people to obtain a copy of your company's electronic personnel database. Once we have your database on our system, we prepare it for the analyses decided on at our first meeting. Then as soon as the RIF list is ready, we run the tests and get the results back to quickly so you can manage the RIF process effectively.

Whatever happens, you are prepared. Prepared for settlement negotiations and prepared to litigate. And we are prepared to assist you at every step.

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