Lorraine Henderson, director of the Port of Boston, didn’t enter a plea to a charge of encouraging an illegal immigrant to remain in the country when she appeared in U.S. District Court, according to the Boston Globe.

According to an affidavit, Henderson employed a Brazilian woman to clean her home for $75 to $80 every few weeks for several years. When that housekeeper took time off to have a baby, Henderson allegedly hired two of her Brazilian friends who were also in the U.S. illegally.

After the original housekeeper returned, an agent from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement asked her to wear a wire when she met with Henderson.

In  a recorded conversation, Henderson allegedly counseled the housekeeper to avoid detection by law enforcement, or else she’d be deported.

Henderson has been placed on paid administrative leave.

If convicted, Henderson faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Kelly said, “She’s supposed to be deporting aliens, not hiring them.”

A 53-year-old woman says Starbucks discriminated against her based on age. Starbucks wanted the lawsuit thrown out, but a federal court has ruled there’s enough evidence to allow it to go forward.

Deborah Boyajian applied to be a barista at three different Starbucks in Maine.

At one shop, the manager told Boyajian she wouldn’t be hired because of her limited availability.

However, the manager had concluded that she would not hire Boyajian because of her conduct during her interview and Starbucks’ employees’ account of the applicant’s post-interview behavior when visiting the coffee shop to check on her application.

Boyajian filed a claim under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.

The court noted that the applicant’s behavior during and after her interview would be a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for not hiring her.

However, there were a couple of other problems.

History of hiring those under 30

In her lawsuit, Boyajian introduced several pieces of evidence to try to show Starbucks engaged in age discrimination. The court decided some had merit.

One claim is that the Starbucks manager lied to Boyajian about why she wasn’t hired. The court said inconsistent explanations for failing to hire an applicant may constitute evidence of pretext.

As part of the court case, Starbucks had to turn over recent records regarding hiring.

During the current manager’s tenure at one branch where Boyajian applied, 19 baristas were hired, none of whom were older than 30 at the time of hiring.

The court said there may be legitimate reasons why no applicants over 30 were hired, but it would be up to Starbucks to present those reasons at trial.

This case provides two lessons HR needs to stress with hiring managers:

1. Keep accurate records on why some applicants are hired and others are rejected. Even the appearance of age discrimination can cause a company trouble.
2. Managers can get a company in trouble if they lie to applicants about why there weren’t hired.

The court’s opinion is available online here.

What are your thoughts about this case? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

South Korea has sent 15 military reservist officers to military courts and punished 40 others for playing golf while supposedly on duty.

This wasn’t a one-time thing. An investigation showed all had played golf frequently while on duty.

Golf seems to pose problems for South Korea’s government and military.

In 2006, Prime Minister Lee Hae-Chen stepped down after a golf outing with businessmen sparked a criminal investigation into alleged influence-peddling.

The following year, the country’s air force chief resigned after playing golf while the country was mourning the death of a Korean soldier in Afghanistan.

Golf is hugely popular in South Korea. Estimates say there are two million players in the country of 48 million.

Take Eder Rojas, a flight attendant from Minnesota, for example. He’s been charged with setting a fire in an airplane bathroom.

Federal authorities are seeking Rojas after he failed to show up for his federal court trial.

Rojas was a flight attendant on a May 7 Compass Airlines flight from Minneapolis to Regina, Saskatchewan. The plane had to make an emergency landing in Fargo, ND, because of a paper towel fire in the restroom. No one was injured on the flight that carried 72 passengers and four crew members.

The federal complaint against Rojas says he was upset with the airline for making him work the route.

Rojas faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He may also be ordered to pay restitution for the damage to the plane.

A teacher, identified only as Antonino R., was reprimanded for spitting in the direction of the female school principal three times during a meeting at a Palermo, Italy, training institute.

The teacher said his spitting represented his opinion about the oppressive behavior of the principal. He also claimed his spit couldn’t have reached the principal because his mouth was dry from the heated argument that led to the incident.

The judges who heard the teacher’s appeal of the reprimand said whether the spit could reach the principal was irrelevant.

The court said spitting isn’t a legitimate means of critical expression.

Three years ago, Houston police seized hundreds of sex toys worth $50,000 from the Adult Video Megaplexxx. Now the devices might be missing from the police property room, according to the Houston Chronicle.

After the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the 564 items were legal to sell, the lawyer for the store asked for the items back.

At first the police said, “Sure. We’ll arrange for the property to be returned.”

Then they said, “Uh, we think we destroyed all of it.”

The store’s lawyer, Richard Kuriansky, says, “Yeah, sure, you destroyed it.”

Police need a court order to destroy evidence. No order to destroy the toys exists.

The Chronicle talked to Richard Segura, acting director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, who said police shouldn’t have to safeguard the toys forever.

“What is the police department going to do with a bunch of (sex toys),” Segura said. “Keep them?”

Well …

Ray Hill, a consultant for adult businesses, states the obvious. “I think the cops stole them.”

A federal court has ruled that a city did not violate the Constitutional rights of an employee who received a verbal reprimand for having an affair. The employee, Sharon Johnson, was a police officer for LaVerkin City, UT and a member of the county’s SWAT team.

The somewhat complicated story (but we’ll boil it down to the important parts) starts when she separated from her husband and started divorce proceedings.

During that time, the city sent Ms. Johnson to a training conference elsewhere in Utah — a regular type of refresher course.

At the conference, after training sessions had ended for the day, Ms. Johnson had an affair with another police officer who was not from her department.

Somehow her husband learned of the affair. First the husband told police supervisors his estranged wife had been raped at the conference. Ms. Johnson told her superiors the sex had been consensual.

Then her husband made another false accusation — that his estranged wife had the affair with the city police chief.

The City Council decided to investigate and placed both Ms. Johnson and the chief on administrative leave. The county also asked Ms. Johnson to step down from her SWAT team position until the matter was cleared up.

The investigation was to be confidential, but somehow it leaked to the local newspaper which printed the story on the front page.

Ms. Johnson’s husband recanted his story, and the chief and Ms. Johnson were eventually reinstated to their jobs.

As a result of City Council’s investigation, they learned of her brief affair with the officer from another department. Council’s investigator recommended that Ms. Johnson receive a written reprimand over the incident.

The reasoning for the discipline was based upon the law enforcement code of ethics requiring officers to “keep [their] private life unsullied as an example to all and behave in a manner that does not bring discredit to [the] agency.” The reprimand said Ms. Johnson has allowed her personal life to interfere with her duties as a police officer.

Ms. Johnson refused to sign the written reprimand at which point it turned into a verbal-only reprimand.

When Ms. Johnson sought reinstatement to the SWAT team, the county required her to obtain a letter stating she was in good standing with the city and was no longer on administrative leave. The city’s letter only said that she was no longer on leave, so the county chose not to reinstate her to the SWAT team.

Employee files lawsuit

A few months later, Ms. Johnson resigned from the police force, believing her credibility as an officer had been undermined by the city’s actions. She sued the city and city manager.

She argued that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas established “a broad-based fundamental right to engage in private sexual conduct.”

But the 10th Circuit Court decided it was reasonable for the police department to privately admonish Ms. Johnson’s personal conduct consistent with its code of conduct when it believes that discipline will further the public’s respect for its officers and the department they represent.

In other cases, personal conduct off the job has resulted in someone’s firing.

HRB wrote earlier about the saga of news anchors at the CBS-TV affiliate in Philadelphia. One anchor, Alycia Lane, was let go because, according to the station, she became the news instead of just reporting it. Her firing came before she had a court date on charges she slapped a New York City police officer. Those charges have effectively been dropped.

How much should personal conduct outside work matter to a person’s career? Does it depend on the type of job? What type of jobs should have so-called “morals clauses” in contracts? Let us hear from you.

HR Blunders has already written about how badmouthing a former employee can get a company in trouble. The opposite — giving a glowing recommendation that glosses over serious problems — can cost companies millions, as a recent court case from Louisiana shows. A positive referral letter that omitted a doctor’s on-the-job drug use may cost his former employer millions of dollars.

Lakeview Anesthesia Associates (LAA) and Lakeview Medical Center (LMC) discovered Dr. Robert Berry — an anesthesiologist — had been using narcotics while on duty. He was terminated from his positions at LAA and LMC.

Berry applied for a position with Kadlec Medical Center, which sought referrals.

Two doctors from LAA issued referral letters, saying Berry was an excellent clinician and that he would be as asset to any anesthesia service. The letters didn’t mention anything about Berry’s dismissal for drug use.

LMC issued its own letter which gave only the dates during which Berry was on staff at the facility. It also said nothing about his drug problem.

Berry started work at Kadlec. While under the influence of Demerol, Berry’s negligent performance led to the near-death of a patient, leaving her in a permanent vegetative state.

Kadlec spent $8 million defending and settling a lawsuit against it. Then, it went after LAA, LMC and the two doctors who wrote the glowing referral letters to recover what it lost because of Berry’s mistake.

The court’s ruling is a bit complicated, but the upshot is that LAA and the two doctors will have to pay for the misleading referrals — possibly in the millions.

Referrals’ content made all the difference

The Fifth Circuit federal court is holding LAA and the two doctors responsible, but not LMC. The court said, “The letters from [the doctors] were false on their face and patently misleading.”

The judge also wrote, “But because Lakeview Medical’s letter was not materially misleading, and because the hospital did not have a legal duty to disclose its investigation of Dr. Berry and its knowledge of his drug problems,” the hospital would not be held responsible.

The matter of how much LAA and its doctors will have to pay is still up in the air. A jury awarded Kadlec $5 million and originally apportioned the responsibility to include the hospital. The matter of apportioning responsibility has been remanded to a lower court since the hospital is no longer liable. Under the original apportionment, the doctors were held 25% responsible, which would have equalled $1.25 million. Taking the hospital out of the equation will likely make that amount go up.

Certainly, you’ve heard the advice before: If you can’t give a good referral, just give the dates the person worked for you. Now, you’ve heard it from a federal court. Best advice: Develop a company policy for HR and all managers regarding referral letters with the advice of legal counsel. Tell managers that 100% adherence to the policy is necessary to keep your company out of costly trouble.

Let us know what you think about this case and about your company’s referral letter policy.

Kadlec v. Lakeview (link is a PDF).

Probably not.

For Italy’s paramilitary police, the Carabinieri, it’s apparently fair game for the employer to not only know about affairs but to also put a stop to them.

Italy’s highest court has ruled the Carabinieri must not have affairs so that the force’s name isn’t besmirched.

A member of the special police had appealed a lower court ruling sentencing him to four months in jail for insulting and threatening to throw a desk at his boss, who’d asked him to break off an affair with a married woman, according to wire service reports.

The ruling said the Carabinieri are called to “exemplary conduct and could not bring discredit to the armed forces with extra-marital relationships.”

By the way, the motto of the Carabinieri is “Faithful through the centuries.”

That’s more or less the effect of a ruling by Norway’s Supreme Court: Police dogs should be considered civil servants, just as the police officers who work with them are.

The ruling was necessary in the case of a man breaking into a house. He was chased down by police dog Vera. Once he was in handcuffs, the burglar struck the German Shepherd.

The man was found guilty of burglary, but charges that he had attacked a civil servant were thrown out in two lower courts.

The country’s highest court reinstated that charge, according to wire service reports.

Attacking a civil servant carries a possible three-year prison term.

The court said since the officer and dog work as a unit, an attack on the dog is the same as an attack on an officer.

No word on Vera’s reaction to the verdict.