Court affirms library clerk's suspension for messing up meeting room bookings (and other stuff)

Janice P. Bruno, Clerk III at the Jefferson Parish Library handled bookings of library meeting rooms.  She was reprimanded for failing to notify the maintenance department that two events at the East Bank Regional Library had been cancelled. On each occasion a maintenance employee had spent time setting up the meeting room for the scheduled event; on one of the occasions the maintenance employee had worked overtime to do the room setup. Later, she was notified that she was being given a 5.5 day suspension without pay. The basis for the suspension was violation of conduct regulations, violation of sick leave policy, and continued defiance of library procedures. She sued the library and recently lost at the Louisiana appellate court.

Bruno v. Jefferson Parish Library Dept., No. 04-CA-504 Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fifth Circuit, 2004 La. App. LEXIS 2925, November 30, 2004, Decided 2004 La. App. LEXIS 2925 http://www.fifthcircuit.org/OPINIONS/OIP_2004/11_2004/04ca0504.pdf

Minow take: Library employment cases, like any employment cases, get very fact specific.  You really need to read the whole case to see what's up, including possible yelling at her supervisor, fist banging etc. There's more to this case, and the reason I don't like employment law is the she-said-she-said-he-said character of it all.

I remember that when I was a librarian, I really disliked the job of booking meeting rooms. If you made a mistake, you could really mess up people's plans. One time my library booked Eckankar and all the neighborhood ministers and pastors called to complain. They threatened to picket and call the news media-that's why I remember it. They were upset because we wouldn't let them book a room, yet we were letting this "new age" group in to show a film despite the library's "no religious use" policy.  Not until I went to law school did I learn that our policy was wildly at odds with First Amendment jurisprudence. In fact that experience helped energize me to focus on learning library law. Read the Library's Legal Answer Book for the whole story.