The Employer’s Legal Advisor

The Power of the Lie

In another case, the night-shift supervisor of a manufacturing plant thought that the company wanted him to lie (which was not true) about having observed an employee engage in an act of misconduct. It would have been evident from a cursory review of the time cards that the employee was not working the same shift as the supervisor and thus could not have observed the employee. Being much younger and far more naive than I am now, I took the supervisor at his word and did not check the time cards because it never dawned on me that someone would tell such an obvious lie. Meanwhile, the opposition did subpoena the time cards, which I reviewed before production was demanded by my opponent and discovered the lie. By that time, ...