Stupid Managers
Strip Searching Employees At Work
By Daniel Muniz

It has been generally accepted that employers are liable for the actions of their employees as long as their malfeasance occurred during the scope of their employment. Part of the rationale is the “deep pocket theory” in that somebody has to pay but oftentimes there is the notion that employers ought to be responsible enough not to hire lowlife degenerates whose actions can lead to tragedy; but what about stupid people?

That category is much harder to screen out because this planet is filled with plenty of stupid people and as far as I can tell that just like the poor, we are always going to have them. But what makes stupidity so onerous is that morons can look like ordinary people until they do something outrageous. And that is what happened in Mount Washington, Ky to teenage employee Louise Ogborn of McDonalds. Her incident sounds like something right out of a late night comedy skit.

Louise’s mother had just lost her job so this young girl worked as many extra shifts as possible to help with the bills. So April 9, 2004 was no different when she volunteered to stay late for the evening rush. It was then that her manager, Donna Summers, asked Louise to step inside her cramped office. Summers was on the phone with the cops talking about an employee who stole a customer’s purse. After a few more moments, Summers then confirmed police suspicions that Louise was indeed the thief. Louise denied the accusations but what happened next was sheer insanity.

The police officer on the phone demanded that Louise be stripped searched in the office. Summers complied and ordered Louise to empty out her pockets and to take off her clothes. Louise was also forced to remove her bra and panties. Even though nothing was found on her person, the police insisted that she remain naked in the office until they arrived. There was only a small apron that the teenager used to cover her nude body while she waited for the cops to show up.

However, there was still a busy restaurant to run so Summers had 27 year old employee Jason Bradley watch over Louise and maintain contact with the police. At this point, the person on the phone requested Bradley to remove the apron and do certain sexual things to Louise. Bradley flatly refused and walked out. Summers couldn’t spend any more time to stand guard over Louise and there was no other employee she could spare. As a result, the caller asked if she could find someone else who not an employee. Summers had a fiancé, Walter Nix, so she asked him to come over. This 43 year old exterminator readily agreed to watch over a naked teenage girl and he quickly showed up.

Nix then happily complied with every bizarre request from the person on the phone. That meant taking away Louise’s small apron and ordering her to do jumping jacks and to stand on a chair and bend over. The caller then told Nix to spank her bare buttocks. At one request, he slapped her bare cheeks for ten minutes. Summers would check up on Louise who had now broken down in tears. The manager refused the girl’s request to call the cops because she felt that she was simply complying with police orders. At the end of three hours of torment, the caller then asked Nix to perform a sexual act on Louise in which he happily obliged since he too felt that he was also doing the bidding of law enforcement.

Next, the caller demanded that Summers find someone else to watch Louise even though this had now gone on for over three hours. Summers found 58 year old maintenance worker Thomas Simms to stay in the office. The caller then demanded that Simms do the same stuff that Nix had done to Louise. Simms flatly refused and also walked out. At this point, a few brain cells must have begun to properly function because Summers suspected something might be wrong.

She called up her own manager whom she thought was already on the same line with the police officer during this ordeal. To her horror, Summers discovered that her own boss was asleep all this time. Now the real cops were called and when they arrived, they promptly arrested Walter Nix. Of course the police easily deduced that some pervert was getting his kicks off of this although they were truly disturbed that Summers was stupid enough to allow this to go on for so long.

Prank phone calls have long been the staple of many adolescents although most people usually figure out that they have been had after the first few minutes and hang up. Some experts feel that the reason McDonalds was targeted was because the franchise is so highly regimented in that there is a written procedure for everything that involves running the restaurant. However, some people may be completely lost if something is outside of their structured environment. This pervert simply found a way to exploit a manager who stopped thinking.

Although Walter Nix strenuously testified that he was simply following police orders, he ended up pleading guilty to unlawful imprisonment, sexual abuse, and sexual misconduct. He was slapped with a five year prison sentence.

The manager was immediately fired. She filed a type of “no contest” plea to charges of unlawful imprisonment and received probation. But to add insult to injury, Summers filed a lawsuit against McDonalds and she actually won $100,000 in compensatory damages and a whopping $1 million in punitive damages. She felt that she too was also a victim in that McDonalds did not properly warn their franchises of hoax callers. It is totally irrelevant to her that she didn’t use any good judgment or make any good decisions in this fiasco.

Summers doesn’t deserve a dime and she should have gotten the exact same punishment that her fiancé received because she was the one who set these chain of events in motion. This manager should not have received a financial award for her own stupidity which was also a criminal act. Incidentally, Summers ended her engagement to Walter Nix supposedly because she was revolted when she saw what he did to Louise in the surveillance tapes even though she was dutifully following all of the pervert’s requests. Apparently she is not going to share her jury award with Nix.

However, Louise Ogborn did receive $1.1 million in compensatory damage and $5 million in punitive damages.

This case vividly shows what is so wrong about the deep pocket theory. Trial lawyers have been able to exploit big awards for stupidity and the outrageous behavior of idiots such as Donna Summers who was criminally responsible for all of this. There ought to be caps in place to limit the insatiable appetite of hungry trial lawyers. The right people need to be punished but stupid people like Donna Summers should never be entitled to any cash awards.

The police did find the pervert who was identified as 38 year old David Stewart who was a prison guard in Panama City. Stewart had even been through a police academy and acted as a volunteer deputy for a tiny police department in Florida. Unfortunately, the circumstantial evidence of surveillance tapes showing him purchasing the phone card that was used for the crank calls was not enough to persuade a jury to convict him.

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