NC-285 - Harassment

The Alleged Harasser was the Appellant’s supervisor. The Appellant brought a harassment complaint (Complaint) against the Alleged Harasser. The Complaint contained 15 alleged incidents.

An investigation was mandated into the Complaint. One investigator interviewed nine individuals, including the Appellant and the Alleged Harasser, and provided a Final Investigation Report (FIR) to the Respondent. The Respondent, after considering the FIR, found that the Complaint did not meet the definition of harassment.

The Appellant appealed the Respondent’s Decision.

As a preliminary matter, the ERC reviewed a large quantity of new evidence on appeal that the Appellant sought to introduce. The ERC found the new evidence on appeal inadmissible.

With respect to the merits, the ERC found that the appeal should be allowed, because the Decision was procedurally unfair, and clearly unreasonable.  

The ERC believed that the investigation contained unreasonable omissions that amounted to a failure to pursue “obviously crucial evidence”, which may have seriously impacted the conclusions in the Decision. Accordingly, the ERC found that there was a breach of procedural fairness.

The ERC also found that the Decision was clearly unreasonable on sufficiently central points, resulting in serious shortcoming with the Decision.

The ERC recommends that the appeal be allowed.