Call-center worker's $12M sexual harassment verdict tough to claim

DES MOINES -- Every day, Danielle Rennenger says, she and other female co-workers at an Indianola call center were called “whores” and “sluts.” She says they were accused of having sexually transmitted diseases and even forced to sit on a male co-worker’s lap.

Then, when she complained, she was fired, she said.

“We were all lost and trapped,” she said in an interview.

Last week, Rennenger won her vindication when a jury returned an $11.9 million verdict in Rennenger’s favor, including $10 million in punitive damages against four companies: Manley Toy Direct LLC., Toy Network LLC., SLB Toys USA Inc. (known as Toy Quest), and Aquawood LLC.

But collecting that award might be more difficult than getting the verdict.

Rennenger and her Des Moines attorney, Jill Zwagerman, acknowledge they could be in for a tough legal battle to collect money from any one of the four separately organized, but interconnected, California and Iowa-based toy corporations that jurors held accountable for the sexual harassment she suffered.

Zwagerman contends that the maze of corporate structure was intended to protect companies from lawsuits by leaving plaintiffs’ lawyers spinning their wheels. But she said the judgment bodes well for lawsuits brought by four other women who say they were harassed while working at the same call center as Rennenger, she said.

Brooke Timmer, an attorney at Urbandale’s Fiedler and Timmer law firm, says it’s rare for companies to go to such lengths to avoid responsibility for their actions. And it will ultimately make it difficult to collect damages, Timmer said.

“I think the likelihood is probably pretty slim,” she said.

Two Des Moines attorneys who represented the four companies at trial did not return a reporter’s phone call or email.

Timmer’s firm handles about a couple of dozen sexual harassment cases each year. While the actions of the toy company might have been on the extreme end, Timmer says, sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the workplace are rampant issues in companies big and small, regardless of the industry segment.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all,” Timmer said. “It happens everywhere.”

Rennenger, who now lives in Oklahoma City, began working as a customer service representative at the Indianola call center in April 2007, answering questions over the phone about a line of Toy Quest toys, which sold products such as the Banzai backyard water slide.

She had undergone back surgery and wanted something less physical than her previous jobs of managing a Casey’s General Store and working at Godfather’s Pizza.

“It was just an opportunity to take a better position in a less stressful, I thought, situation,” she said.

The harassment came from two men, a supervisor and a co-worker, though neither was named as a defendant in the lawsuit when it was first filed in August 2010. Rennenger said that at first she saw another woman, Amme Roush, suffer the brunt of the harassment.

In her own federal lawsuit set for trial Oct. 26, Roush accused the supervisor of asking her “what sexual position she liked best.” Once he told the office on a day she called in sick that it was because she had a sexually transmitted disease, the lawsuit said. The co-worker would “force” Roush to sit on his lap, according to the lawsuit.

Roush’s lawsuit claims she was fired in June 2007, approximately one month after complaining to a California corporate office about her treatment. Both Roush’s and Rennenger’s lawsuits claim women at the call center were called “sluts” and other profanities “daily, if not hourly.”

For Rennenger, the environment got worse after Roush left, she said. Her lawsuit details actions like the harassers “holding up money and asking plaintiff to dance.” Rennenger herself was fired from the call center in March 2008, a little less than one year after she started.

Though both men were fired after an internal investigation, the toxic situation went on too long because women in the office didn’t know whom to turn to when the top supervisor was causing the problems, Zwagerman said.

“These harassers were just left on their own with no supervision, no accountability and, like anything, it just escalated and got out of control,” she said.

Bringing the lawsuit was complicated by “shell games” by the company Rennenger worked for, Zwagerman said. While Rennenger believed she worked for the California-based Toy Quest, attorneys for all four corporations denied in several court filings ever hiring her as an employee, records show.

Still, despite that, jurors “saw through” the ruse, she said.

“I think what it came down to was the jury saw through the shell games and really sent them a message,” Zwagerman said. “I think the jury said that if you’re going to do business in Iowa, you’re going to take responsibility for your actions.”

Even though she has no money in hand, Rennenger said she’s feels validated knowing that jurors saw the toxic environment where she and other women spent their workdays.

“I feel like now it’s out there,” she said. “It’s said, and it’s on record.”

Contributing: Kevin Hardy