A Florida Carrabba’s owner will pay $690,000 for a manager’s alleged sexual harassment
Some women who worked at the Brandon Carrabba’s Italian Grill restaurant during six months of 2018 will split $690,000, according to a consent decree that ended a sexual harassment lawsuit by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The EEOC sued Carrabba’s Italian Grill and OS Restaurant Services over the alleged actions of former managing partner Sean Bommarito, who ran the 801 Providence Rd. location.
“Mr. Bommarito subjected female employees to unwelcome conduct and comments of a sexual nature,” the lawsuit claimed. “Mr. Bommarito also explicitly and implicitly linked female employee’s employment to her submission to his sexual advances and toleration of the sexual harassment.
“Female employees indicated to Mr. Bommarito that his conduct was unwelcome and resisted his advances.”
The suit claimed that though Carrabba’s knew Bommarito was creating a hostile work environment from the time he was given control of the restaurant in September 2016, no action was taken to stop it until his November 2018 firing.
But the lawsuit and the consent decree covers only women who worked at that restaurant from May 2018 through Bommarito’s firing. The consent decree says the EEOC will send letters and make phone calls to each woman who worked with Bommarito during that time “to determine whether she was subject to harassment at Carrabbas.”
The EEOC will decide who gets a piece of the $690,000 and how big a piece.
Deciding factors, the consent decree says, will be “the severity of the sexual harassment...the duration for which each class member endured the sexual harassment ... whether each class member was personally sexually harassed or experienced a hostile work environment ... and the emotional harm suffered” by each woman.
