Australian David Hingst appealed his 2017 lawsuit against former employer Construction Engineering over a supervisor’s allegedly-pointed flatulence.
“I would be sitting with my face to the wall and he would come into the room, which was small and had no windows,” Hingst said, according to the BBC. He claimed the supervisor, Greg Short, would “lift his bum and fart” on the worker “five or six times a day.”
Hingst believed his boss’s crop-dusting campaign was part of a workplace conspiracy to force Hingst into resignation. The suit claimed the farting, along with “bullying phone calls,” caused the plaintiff “severe stress” and “psychiatric injuries.”
Construction Engineering and Short both deny the lawsuit’s claims. Short admitted that he suffered from bad gas, but insisted farts in Hingst’s direction only happened “once or twice, maybe” with no “intention of distressing or harassing” his subordinate.
Previously, a court — unconvinced that either the farting or the phone calls qualified as harassment — ruled in the employer’s favor. The appeals court will issue its ruling this upcoming Friday.
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