Family Dollar Gets Trial Over Worker Weight, Age Joke Complaints

Family Dollar Stores Inc. and a subsidiary must defend at trial claims that a director was investigated and fired in retaliation for threatening to report a supervisor and other workers for mocking his age and weight.

The role the supervisor played in the initiation of the probe into the director’s unprofessional behavior at a work dinner in Chicago, cited as the reason for firing him, could cause a jury to doubt the company’s explanation as pretextual, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan said. It’s disputed whether the vice president, who instigated the investigation, did so at ...