Employee wins case against ‘sleazy’ driver
AN EASTLANDS Sanity employee has won a $45,000 sexual harassment case against a “sleazy” Toll delivery driver who slapped her bottom and called her “juicy”.
The driver, Frayne Higgins, must now cough up the cash himself within 30 days after a protracted and bitter legal stoush during which he tried to sue his victim for defamation.
The music shop employee first lodged a complaint against Mr Higgins in 2017, alleging that during 2013 and 2014, he’d pop up between the racks and scare her, frequently ask whether she had a boyfriend and call her “juicy”.
She also said he’d generally engage in “sleazy, intimidating and favouring behaviour towards her” and on one occasion he’d slapped her bottom when she bent over to check stock he’d delivered. A newly published Anti-Discrimination
Tribunal of Tasmania decision revealed Sanity lodged a complaint with Toll, which the woman wasn’t aware about until after the fact.
Tribunal member Kate Cuthbertson said the woman then received a phone call from Mr Higgins’s wife, demanding to speak with her about the complaint. She later received a letter from Mr Higgins’s lawyer making a $30,000 claim for defamation for economic loss plus a written apology.
The woman, who was “very upset by the letter and very angry”, did not return to work for some time, later saying she felt intimidated.
She asked for the complaint to be dropped, “because she did not feel safe … and did not want to cause trouble”.
Mr Higgins was stood down from duties but later reinstated under the proviso he not deliver stock to Sanity.
The woman ceased her employment with Sanity a few months later in late 2017. Mr Higgins was fired the following year, with Toll explaining he’d been instructed not to contact the woman.
At a hearing in Hobart earlier this year, the woman’s colleagues backed up her claims and a doctor gave evidence saying she’d developed symptoms of anxiety and depression as a result of the legal threats.
Also at the hearing, Mr Higgins’s wife claimed in 31 years of marriage, her husband had always been faithful and she’d never observed him being “flirty with anyone”.
Ms Cuthbertson said the complainant’s evidence was convincing and found most of her allegations true.
The tribunal did not uphold the woman’s claims of victimisation regarding the defamation letter, but said it was a key aggravating feature of his misconduct, which had a “profound” impact on the woman’s mental health.