Louisville — More than 100 employees of the Kroger distribution center in Louisville have sued Kroger and Zenith Logistics, contending the companies used hidden video surveillance in the men’s restroom without the workers’ knowledge.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in Jefferson Circuit Court, includes 138 employees or former employees from throughout Kentucky and Indiana. It names the center’s manager, Oscar Fussenegger, as a defendant.
The lawsuit says employees discovered they were being monitored on Nov. 11, 2006, and each defendant has suffered injury “as a result of the fact that their most private activities in the restroom have been monitored.”
The lawsuit does not indicate why there was video surveillance in the bathroom, or what proof the plaintiffs have that the companies placed it there.
Attorney Lea Player, who represents the Kroger employees, said she would not comment on the lawsuit.
Claims made in filing a lawsuit give only one side of the case.
Kroger spokesman Tim McGurk said this lawsuit, like a similar one filed in federal court in December, is “without merit.”
Reached at his home, Fussenegger said, “There’s a lot of things I’d like to say,” but that he should defer to Kroger. Zenith Vice President Rich Grau also declined to comment.
The plaintiffs seek a jury trial and compensatory and punitive damages.
In April, about 700 workers walked off the job at the distribution center for several days during a dispute with the companies that operate the center for Kroger.
The members of Teamsters Local 89 ratified agreements with Transervice Logistics, which runs the trucking operations at the site, and with Zenith Logistics.
The employees used to work directly for Kroger, but the supermarket chain transferred operations to the two companies earlier this year.

Indianapolis - There’s a new development in the lawsuit filed against Eli Lilly on charges of racial discrimination. Current and former employees allege, because they were black, their pay checks suffered.

The national NAACP president will be in Indianapolis Thursday to announce that they’re adding their organization to the list of plaintiffs in the case.

They say it’s now a national concern, complaints coming in from all over the country, not just Indianapolis.

This case first caught the nation’s attention when an Eli Lilly employee came forward with allegations that a black doll with a noose tied around it’s neck was left on her desk at work

“My first reaction to the noose was fear, real fear that I felt,” said plaintiff Cassandra Welch.

Welch was one of the first plaintiffs in the discrimination case against Eli Lilly.

“I can truly feel what happened in the history books,” continued Welch.

She says working there was like working back in time.

“Employees being referred to as buckwheat, the N-word was a regular thing. At the company there have been advertisements posted on the board advertising for a small black “N” that could fit on a flatbed,” Welch explained.

Eli Lilly issued the following response in regards to the allegations: “The allegations against the company are not reflective of who we are, what we value and how we operate.”

“This is a company that likes to check the boxes,” said Joshua Rose, Welch’s attorney.

Rose says you can see the company’s diversity police on paper, but you don’t see it in action in how they treat their black employees.

“Diversity to them means selling their products to a diverse range of people,” said Rose.

Welch says one of their diversity policies is to hold, what they call, conflict management sessions.

It’s a meeting where employees are encouraged to say what’s on their mind, with a promise that nothing leaves the room once it’s over.

Welch describes one that was held with her supervisor. “She said in that session in front of two other Lilly employees that she absolutely believes that African Americans are not equivalent to Caucasian Americans, that blacks can’t do the same work as whites. That they don’t deserve the same pay as whites and I was supposed to walk out of that session and say oh thank god she told me and our feeling are out on the table and everything’s fine. Well everything was not fine.”

She says she went straight to Human Resources for help.

“I went immediately to HR and they said ‘no, wait, wait we can’t hear this, you can’t share anything that came out of that session. We don’t document that,’” said Welch.

Plantiffs say they are suing for change. Their goal is to get Eli Lilly to create a policy where incentives given to managers for meeting equal opportunity goals, and penalties are executed for failing to meet them.

CROWN POINT, Ind. — Several Lake County Jail inmates have sued the jail’s warden and the sheriff, alleging that unsanitary conditions at the jail led them to contract the dangerous drug-resistant staph “superbug.”

Their lawsuits, filed late last week in federal court in Hammond, name Warden Bernard Freeman and Lake County Sheriff Rogelio “Roy” Dominguez.
Sheriff’s Department spokesman Mike Higgins and Sheriff’s Department attorney John Kopack said Friday they weren’t aware of any lawsuit filed against the Sheriff’s Department concerning MRSA — methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
But they confirmed that the jail was closed down for one day for sterilization last year after inmates were diagnosed with the staph infection.
Higgins said he was not aware of any current cases of MRSA in the jail.
Several Porter County inmates recently sued the Porter County Jail for the same reason.
One lawsuit filed Thursday was brought by inmate Thormonn Lawrence, who charges that Freeman and Dominguez refused to respond to Lawrence’s grievances, including exposure to MRSA.
In his statement of claim, Lawrence said he caught MRSA at the Lake County Jail and “could have died as a result of the medical health care providers … and careless administration.”
Lawrence said he had a bump that went untreated for three weeks until finally a staff member burst the sore without providing anything to cover the draining lesion.
Lawrence said he was left in the same cell with uninfected inmates and given antibiotics several days later.
Health-care specialists have targeted jails and schools as particularly susceptible to the spread of MRSA because of the daily person-to-person contact.
MRSA has mutated over several decades because of overuse of antibiotics, morphing into a drug-resistant “superbug.” Left untreated, severe cases have been known to cause death.

BOSTON - In a court filing, several banks say 94 million accounts were affected by the theft of personal data from the parent of TJ Maxx and Marshalls stores.

The number is more than double what the TJX company has reported.

The retailer is in a legal battle with banks, particularly Cincinnati’s Fifth Third, which handled the credit card transaction for TJX.

The court filing released by the banks to The Boston Globe shows the data breach affected about 65 million Visa account numbers and about 29 million MasterCard numbers. TJX had previously said the hackers who breached its systems compromised at least 45.7 million credit and debit card numbers as far back as 2003.

The Hoosier Lottery’s former corporate general counsel is suing the lottery, claiming she was discriminated against because she is disabled. Janna J. Shisler, a quadriplegic, asserts in the suit that former lottery director Esther Q. Schneider made working conditions so intolerable that she quit. Schneider was appointed lottery director in January 2005 by Gov. Mitch Daniels. Her successor, Kathryn Densborn, was appointed last December.

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