"Harold Reynolds's Big Hit: Fired announcer's $5 million contract surfaces in ESPN lawsuit"
You go Harold! "Innocuous hug" now valued at over $5 million. The girl apparently liked the "brief hug", going out to dinner with HR later that same day. Complaint to ESPN apparently not filed until possibly weeks later. Newest Smoking Gun findings at bottom link.
February 9, 2007 ESPN Subpoenaed in Reynolds Case By RICHARD SANDOMIR, NY Times
The State of Connecticut has subpoenaed ESPN to produce by next Friday the personnel files of Harold Reynolds, whom the cable network fired last July after 11 years as one of its baseball analysts.
In his $5 million wrongful termination suit, Reynolds said ESPN had refused to give him a copy of his files so he could learn why he was fired. He said ESPN had never specified why it dismissed him.
In what has become known as a sexual harassment case, Reynolds has admitted only to giving a "brief, innocuous" hug to a female intern at ESPN.
The intern complained to ESPN three weeks after the incident, Reynolds said in his suit in Superior Court in Hartford.
"We asked them for the files, I'd say, probably five times over three months," Daniel Alterman, one of Reynolds's lawyers, said yesterday in a telephone interview. "We went to the state when we discovered that Connecticut law required delivery to an employee of his personnel files."
Alterman said ESPN then defined Reynolds an "outside contractor," not an employee, and refused. But Alterman said "every indicia of his relationship with ESPN as an employee was met: They had control, sent him out and paid his salary."
The State Labor Department issued the subpoena Feb. 1. It sought the documentation in Reynolds's file that was used to determine his eligibility for employment, promotion, raises, termination and discipline. The subpoena also asked for similar information in a "separately maintained security file."
Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, whose office consulted with the labor department on the subpoena, said by telephone, "ESPN isn't going to tell the state of Connecticut to pound sand and defy the subpoena, but more likely, they'll try to narrow it or quash it on whatever legal grounds they may have. I doubt they'll just fail to respond."
Blumenthal said his office's involvement in such a case is "exceedingly rare."
The state law that requires that employers provide workers with copies of their personnel files in a reasonable period of time after a request has been made did not go into effect until 2004.
Reynolds has not worked since his firing. "There's a cloud over Harold's integrity and reputation, and it's undeserved," Alterman said, "and we would like ESPN to honor its obligations."
Chris LaPlaca, an ESPN spokesman, said, "There will be any number of legal machinations along the way, but ultimately we're confident of our position."
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