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A federal judge granted a summary judgement order ending an unusual lawsuit against the $470 million OnPath Federal Credit Union, claiming two of its former CEOs sexually harassed, and discriminated and retaliated against fired executive Matt Harney.
U.S. District Court Judge Ivan Lemelle in New Orleans issued the order in late September after Harney, OnPath's former head of facilities services, failed to submit court documents to oppose the credit union's motion for summary judgement, which asked the judge to rule on the lawsuit's undisputed facts.
"Accordingly, this motion is deemed to be unopposed, and because it appears to the Court that the motion has merit, it is ordered that the Motion for Summary judgement is granted," Judge Lemelle wrote.
"We are pleased that the court dismissed this frivolous filing. OnPath has always been committed to equal employment opportunity and will continue to do so," the Harahan, La.-based OnPath said in a prepared statement on Monday.
Harney's attorney did not respond to CU Times' request for comment.
Before the summary judgement was granted, the case was scheduled to be heard before a jury in January 2022.
Harney's lawsuit was unusual because two female CEOs, Mignhon Tourné and Sonya Jarvis, who worked at OnPath, were accused of these alleged workplace issues. Additionally, most sexual harassment lawsuits are filed by women, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The number of sexual harassment complaints has averaged about 7,284 annually from 2010 to 2019 and only about 16% to 18% were filed by men, statistics from the EEOC showed.
Harney filed his lawsuit in June 2020 claiming that over nine years, from 2010 soon after he joined the credit union to June 2019 when he was fired, Tourné and Jarvis harassed, discriminated against and retaliated against him in various ways. Tourné served as CEO from 2007 to 2016 and Jarvis was CEO from 2016 to 2019. Harney also claimed that the stress from these alleged workplace issues triggered a mild heart attack that landed him in the hospital.
But according to the undisputed facts listed in OnPath's motion for summary judgement document, Harney never reported to the board of directors that any type of harassment took place.
Nonetheless, the credit union's list of uncontested facts read that even if assuming, for purposes of its summary judgement motion, that Tourné and Jarvis harassed Harney, "Harney suffered no harassment by Tourné at any point" after she left the credit union. In addition, OnPath also pointed out that even assuming, for purposes of its summary judgment motion, that Jarvis harassed Harney, any such "alleged harassment by Jarvis ended shortly after Harney began working remotely in early 2017."
In a deposition, Harney testified there was one additional isolated incident of unwanted physical contact after he began working remotely, but he did not know the date of the incident, OnPath's court documents noted.
When the credit union began investigating Harney in January 2019 to determine whether he was performing on his job responsibilities remotely, he denied any inappropriate behavior had occurred between Jarvis and himself.
At the conclusion of the investigation, it was unclear to the credit union what, if any, work Harney performed for his $88,000 annual salary, according to OnPath. In June 2019, he was fired.
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