Opinion ID: 3000415
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sarah Stoll

Text: Bombaci first argues that JCPG was negligent in remedying Mueller’s and Wampner’s harassment because Stoll was a supervisor who should have forwarded Bombaci’s complaints to higher management. “Where an employer sets up a ‘point person’ to accept complaints, ‘this person becomes the natural channel for the making and forwarding of complaints, and complainants can be expected to utilize it in the normal case.’ ” Parkins v. Civil Constructors of Ill., Inc., 163 F.3d 1027, 1035 (7th Cir. 1998) (quoting Young v. Bayer Corp., 123 F.3d 672, 674 (7th Cir. 1997)). “Where a point person [i]s not identified or easily accessible, an employer can receive notice of harassment from a ‘department head’ or someone that ‘the complainant reasonably believed was authorized to receive and forward (or respond to) a complaint of harassment.’ ” Id. JCPG’s sexual harassment policy set up a number of point people, including all supervisors, to receive sexual harassment complaints. Therefore, we must determine whether Bombaci has offered evidence indicating that she reasonably believed that Stoll was a supervisor or, at the very least, that Bombaci reasonably believed that Stoll was someone whose duties required her to forward sexual harassment complaints to higher management. See Valentine v. City of Chicago, 452 F.3d 670, 678 (7th Cir. 2006); Young, 123 F.3d at 675. In Parkins, the plaintiff ’s employer had a sexual harassment policy that advised employees to bring complaints to their “immediate supervisor.” The plaintiff, who was a truck driver, said that she complained to a man named Spellman, who assigned truck drivers to work with particular construction crews and called the truck drivers’ union to request additional drivers. Spellman had little discretionary authority, and even that authority was subject to a superintendent’s approval. We held that 8 No. 06-2222 Spellman was not a supervisor and that the plaintiff could not reasonably have believed that he would refer her complaints to higher management. We said that Spellman’s “limited duties and authority, coupled with [the plaintiff ’s] daily access to and observance of people with authority to correct the problem, made it unreasonable for [her] to believe that Spellman was the type of employee who could be expected to convey her complaints to someone who could stop the harassment.” Parkins, 163 F.3d at 1038. By contrast, in Valentine, we held that a plaintiff notified her employer of sexual harassment when she complained to an individual who supervised forty to fifty employees and was authorized to transfer employees to different job sites. 452 F.3d at 678. In this case, Stoll’s most significant tasks, assigning duties to joggers and assisting with scheduling, were similar to the ones found insufficient to confer supervisory status in Parkins—assigning duties to truck drivers and requesting additional drivers from the union office. Stoll also distributed payroll checks, notified employees of meetings, and kept track of employees’ vacation days, but those tasks are best described as secretarial. None of Stoll’s duties suggest that she could effect the terms of another individual’s employment in a way that could remedy sexual harassment.1 Though Bombaci and other employees stated that they believed that Stoll was a supervisor, Bombaci has offered no evidence that this belief was reasonable in light of Stoll’s duties. 1 Bombaci also claims that Creasey told her that she should report to Stoll on her first day of work and that Stoll would tell her where to go and what to do. This evidence does not indicate that Stoll was Bombaci’s supervisor. Employers routinely assign veteran employees to train their new co-workers in the basic duties of a job. This type of direction, standing alone, does not suggest that an employer anticipates the veteran co-worker will forward sexual harassment complaints to management. No. 06-2222 9