Law Office of Arkady Itkin 

Whether the conduct of a co-worker or a supervisor is sufficiently pervasive to create be actionable as a hostile work environment must be determined form the totality of the circumstances. The victim must prove that the defendant's conduct would have interfered with a reasonable employee's work performance and would have seriously affected the psychological well-being of a reasonable employee. In considering, for instance, whether a certain conduct is severe enough to constitute sexual harassment hostile work environment, the factors that will determine this will be the nature of the unwelcome sexual acts or words (generally, touching is more offensive than words), the frequency of the offensive encounters, the total number of days over which all of the offensive conduct occurred, and the context in which the harassing conduct occurred.

In determining what constitutes "sufficiently pervasive" harassment, acts of harassment cannot be occasional, isolated, sporadic, or trivial; rather, the plaintiff must show a concerted pattern of harassment of a repeated, routine, or a generalized nature.

Surprisingly, one of the common reasons that employees are terminated is violence accusations. While sometimes those accusations have grounds and are well justified, often an employee is being accused of violent behavior by his co-workers or a supervisor who tries to "frame" him and have him fired for one reason or another. 

An employer has a duty to investigate thoroughly and promptly any allegations of violence and other kinds of harassment, even if the employer doesn't believe the allegations to have any merit. Therefore, the employer is likely to find itself in a conundrum: if the employer doesn't believe the alleged victim and doesn't discipline the alleged perpetrator of violence, the company risks being sued by the victim for harassment and/or failure to prevent violence. If, on the other hand, the company take victim's side and demote, transfer or terminate an employee because of violence, the employer risks being sued by the disciplined employee for defamation.

If you have been falsely accused of violence and you are in a process of undergoing investigation, it's crucial that you comply with investigation, convey your side of the story in a clear and credible way and above all - show that you are not angry at anyone - you are not angry at the accuser and you do not wish harm upon anyone. In other words, you have to communicate to the investigator and your employer that by nature you are not a violent person and you don't have temper, even when you are provoked and falsely accused of violence, harassment, and similar violations. 

Having an image of a calm, rational, respectful and a non-confrontational person will help your employer justify the decision to believe you, take your side and not take any adverse employment action against you more than many other factors.