If You're Going To Court To Prove Harrah's Is Not Your Employer, Probably Don't List Harrah's On Your LinkedIn Profile
from the just-a-tip dept
Yet another story of someone running into trouble in court due to their social networking profile. A guy sued Harrah's, claiming he was fired in an age discrimination suit. In an effort to get out of it, Harrah's claimed it never really employed the guy. Instead, it noted that he had been employed by the Grand, which was then bought by a subsidiary of Harrah's, and thus it was the subsidiary who should be considered the employer for the sake of the lawsuit. The guy debunked this by showing that he'd been given a Harrah's employee handbook, and his paychecks came from Harrah's. But, sealing the deal was that Harrah's own witness who tried to tell the court that the subsidiary (for which he worked) was not Harrah's listed Harrah's as his employer in his LinkedIn profile, and when confronted tried to claim it wasn't really his profile:the evidence supporting Defendants’ explanation for Plaintiff’s termination consists primarily of Hirsch’s testimony, and Hirsch was not a credible witness. Notably, Hirsch testified that he did not work for Defendants even though he listed [Harrah's] as his employer on his LinkedIn page. When confronted with this inconsistency, Hirsch could not offer an explanation except to state that it was not his LinkedIn page. This assertion was incredible given that Hirsch had already verified all of the information contained on the LinkedIn page as being accurate. This and other inconsistencies and illogical conclusions discredit Hirsch’s testimony that Plaintiff’s Action Plan was intended to improve Plaintiff’s performance.
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Filed Under: evidence, social networks
Companies: harrah's, linkedin
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Re:
Perjury needs to be willful so you have to establish the person's state of mind and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew they were lying.
That's a lot of work for a pretty small fish in this case.
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Re: Re:
In this case, a subpoena of LinkedIn that showed that the profile was created by the same IP that this guy has, combined with the accuracy of the information on the profile would probably be sufficient evidence. But IANAL, maybe it's more complicated than that.
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LinkedIn is not accurate
LinkedIn does not accurately display what a user enters as his job title.
For example, my LinkedIn profile shows Computer Support Generalist at The Working Centre, but I've actually entered Contract Computer Support Generalist at The Working Centre. I also tried Computer Support Generalist Contract Position but that didn't work either. I wonder what else LinkedIn alters (censors?).
Moral of the story: If you read it on The Internet it isn't necessarily true.
—Bob.
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