The suit filed in Federal court claims the woman was “subjected to unwelcome sexual contact and sexual advances” and was once burned after she was slapped from behind while bending down to reach into an oven. The club calls all of the allegations “baseless” and says that its internal investigation “found that the allegations— especially some of the more spectacular ones—simply did not occur.”
On February 7, the Philadelphia Daily News reported on a federal suit filed the previous week by Michelle Ciccarella, a former server at Plymouth Country Club in Plymouth Meeting, Pa. In the suit, Ciccarella, 35, asks for a jury trial and seeking punitive damages for “intentional infliction of emotional distress” allegedly caused by her working conditions while she was employed at the club.
In the lawsuit, which seeks compensatory and punitive damages in excess of $150,000 for losses and attorney fees, Ciccarella says the treatment began in 2011 after she had been working at the club for three years, and became so unbearable that she quit working at Plymouth CC in August 2011. Two months later, the Daily News reported, she filed discrimination charges with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In November 2013, the EEOC informed her of her right to sue.
The lawsuit includes lurid details of alleged improper treatment by Joe Rizzo, Plymouth CC’s General Manager, and other co-workers, and says that Ciccarella was humiliated by her superiors in public when she complained. In one instance, according to Mark Schwartz, Ciccarella’s attorney, the server was “slapped from behind so hard while bending down reaching into the oven for bread, that she was burned, leaving a scar that remains.”
Ciccarella wrote to the President of the Plymouth CC Board to protest her working environment, Schwartz told the Daily News, but “Instead of it getting better, they retaliated” by cutting her hours and giving shifts to other servers.
“The Board knew what was going on in that kitchen,” Schwartz told the Daily News. “Unfortunately, neither the idyllic atmosphere nor the legal advances of the last 100 years have penetrated the defendant’s kitchen facilities.”
An attorney for Plymouth CC told the Daily News that all of Ciccarella’s allegations were “baseless.”
Manrico Troncelliti, the club’s solicitor, denied that there was any wrongdoing.
“The club did an investigation and found that the allegations—especially some of the more spectacular ones—simply did not occur,” Troncelliti said.
“The club abhors this type of alleged behavior,” Troncelliti added. “The plaintiff was not fully cooperative [during an investigation], so [the club] found [the allegations] to be without merit.”
Plymouth Country Club has a long-standing “zero- tolerance” policy of anti-sexual harassment and anti-discrimination, Troncelliti added.
“To my knowledge, our finding is that this conduct did not occur, so we could not discipline anyone as of a result,” he told the Daily News. “That being said, we did take action to reinforce with both the employees and membership some additional training in this area, to make sure that they are aware of what is permissible and impermissible conduct between employees as well as with the membership.”
Details of Ciccarella’s allegations can be read at http://articles.philly.com/2014-02-07/news/47129657_1_federal-suit-mark-schwartz-plymouth-country-club
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.