Workplace Restraining Orders on the Increase
Oxnard school psychologist Jacqui Ter-Veen had been on the job one week when a conversation with an upset parent dissolved into a violent threat against her co-workers at the district office.
“I could just take a gun and shoot them all down,” Ter-Veen recalls the parent telling her during a July phone call.
Not taking any chances, the Oxnard Elementary School District got a judge to order the parent to stay 100 feet from its C Street headquarters.
“It is a situation we just can’t take lightly,” says Cerritos attorney Sukhi Sandu, who has secured seven injunctions for jittery educators across the state since March. “The courts and the school districts are taking threats much more seriously.”
Schools are not alone. Public agencies and private businesses are increasingly seeking court orders to prevent acts of workplace violence that have become alarmingly frequent in recent years.
More than half of American companies experienced a violent incident between 1996 and mid-1999, according to one national study. At worst, those episodes resulted in deadly shootings or stabbings.
But far more common, experts say, are verbal threats that frighten employees and hamper productivity.
“It is not unusual for [frightened employees] to take time off work or ask for a reassignment to a space with no windows,” said Ventura attorney Thomas Hutchinson, who has obtained nearly a dozen injunctions to protect workers.
“They’re scared this person is going to find out where they live or come to their house or harm their families,” Hutchinson said. “It’s really a traumatic thing.”
In response, employers have begun to turn to the courts for protection.
High-tech manufacturer Xircom Inc. got an injunction last year to shield 300 employees at its Newbury Park corporate center from harassing phone calls from the estranged wife of a male worker.
Calavo Growers of California obtained an injunction this year against a 65-year-old neighbor of its Santa Paula packinghouse after the man, angry at loud avocado trucks rumbling by his front door, threatened a worker.
Three months ago, Saticoy Lemon Assn. got an order protecting eight employees from a 34-year-old worker who threatened to kill a supervisor after being suspended for showing up drunk for work.
When ordered to leave the packinghouse, the employee screamed at his boss, according to court documents, and the next day workers found a message scrawled on a wall in Spanish: “You bastards, your days are numbered because the Mafia will get you.”
Even Patagonia Inc., lauded nationally as a family-friendly business where employees are encouraged to take midday surf breaks, has experienced a brush with workplace violence.
Its parent company obtained a stay-away order last year after a 26-year-old employee at a surfboard manufacturing subsidiary threw a metal trash can through the front door of the Santa Clara street store, assaulted a manager and threatened to kill owner Yvon Chouinard.
Patagonia spokesman Hal Thomson said the incident prompted the company to reevaluate security measures at the Ventura headquarters.
“It wakes people up to the fact that we’re not immune to things you often just read about in newspapers and see on television,” he said.
Such incidents led the California Legislature in 1994 to enact a law allowing employers to obtain temporary restraining orders and injunctions against individuals who make credible threats of violence against employees.
The legislation, sponsored by then-Assemblywoman Dede Alpert (D-Coronado), was crafted in response to several high-profile incidents in which domestic disputes spilled over to the workplace with deadly results.
One of those involved a love-crazed Dana Point mail carrier who followed a female co-worker to her office and opened fire with a handgun, killing one employee and wounding another.
A longtime aide to Alpert, now a state senator, said the goal of the bill was to create “a protective bubble around the workplace.” But until recently the law was seldom applied.
“It took off really slowly as far as people’s awareness,” said Ventura County Courts Administrator Jeanne Caughell. “It seems like the last year or two [the number of restraining orders] have been steadily increasing.”
Experts say workplace violence is often triggered by pressures to produce, personality conflicts with co-workers, firings and marital problems. A survey by the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, Va., found that 41% of violent acts were verbal threats.
“The ones i see most, someone is mad at their boss, mad at a co-worker or angry at being fired,” said Oxnard attorney Jon Light, who has obtained protective orders for a dozen businesses in recent years.
Although he is not aware of any such orders being violated, Light said they are not always the best solution to a problem with an upset employee. The trick is determining whether an injunction will defuse a situation or make it worse.
“I guess the issue is this: If you’ve got someone who is a wacko, they’re not going to care if there is an injunction or not,” Light said. “It is a 1-in-100,000 situation and it is hard to know who is going to go off and who is just making noises. The key is to determine who you are dealing with.”
In the Oxnard school district case, administrators decided the parent who talked to Ter-Veen should be taken seriously. So did Ventura County Court Commissioner Manuel Covarrubias, who found Ter-Veen’s account credible.
“I can understand that people have frustrations and concerns,” Covarrubias said in issuing his decision. “Unfortunately in our days and times, threats of violence are something you cannot ignore.”
