Applying the recent U.S. Supreme Court precedent from Staub v. Proctor Hospital, a unanimous 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision determined that an internal and supposedly independent disciplinary review of an employee does not necessarily protect the employer from liability for a supervisor’s unlawful discrimination. This is commonly known as the “cat’s paw” theory of liability.
The term “cat’s paw” is a phrase derived from La Fontaine’s fable, “The Monkey and the Cat,” referring to a person (in the fable, a cat) used unwittingly by another (the monkey) to accomplish his own purposes. The concept was injected into the employment discrimination landscape by 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner in 1990 in the landmark case Shager v. Upjohn Co.
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