Skip to main content

Sound the Horn: Age Discrimination Lawsuit Filed Against Dallas Opera


On Monday, an age discrimination, hostile work environment, and retaliation lawsuit was filed against the Dallas Opera by a former horn player, William Scharnberg.  In the alleged facts, Scharnberg claims that after nearly 30 years playing for the Opera, he was terminated in May 2016 and replaced with a 'much' younger player in his 20's.  This came on the heels of a prior attempt following the 2014 - 2015 season by the Opera to terminate his employment on the grounds of his playing style (the facts do not go into specifics, but presumably the Opera believed his playing style fell off, was not in accordance with what was expected of a horn player, etc).  However, Scharnberg appealed that initial attempt to terminate his employment and a unanimous decision was reached to retain him.  However, Scharnberg was terminated in 2016 on the grounds of his playing style.  At the time of his termination, Scharnberg was 67.

In the petition filed in Court on Monday, Scharnberg identified several other members of the Opera (also in their 60's) who had recently been terminated or encouraged to retire and subsequently replaced with younger players in their 20's.  Scharnberg alleged a link between a new Opera CEO (hired in 2010) and a conductor (hired in 2014) to show that they created a hostile work environment meant to discriminate against older players in the Opera by terminating them because of their age, only to replace them with younger and 'inexperienced' players.

This case is pending in Judge Maricela Moore's court in the 162nd District in Dallas.  I have not been before this Judge yet, as she was just elected to the bench this past November.  As a result, it is difficult to say how this case will proceed, although a jury demand was made by Scharnberg with the filing of his petition.  At this point, the Opera has yet to file an answer, but it will be interesting to see this case progress once litigation ramps up.



Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 30, 2019 at 3:17 PM

    This was settled out of court in 2018. The parties agreed to mediation and settled thereafter, with the case being dismissed with prejudice as requested by both parties.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more