Harassment in the Workplace

In the case of Parrish v. Sollecito the questions are:
Should the plaintiff have sued the car dealership that she worked at because of on going harassment by a manager? Why?
The obvious answer is of course. Every employee has the right to work in a safe environment, free from harassment, and when the employee reports multiple incidents to supervisors and the harassment continues, the only recourse is to sue.
In reading additional information about this case, it is documented this harassment also dealt with behavior outside the workplace at a function that was not entirely an off-duty event.
Because the outside behavior was similar to the workplace harassment, the judge in the case ruled that if the behavior had been addressed by management the harassment would not have continued.
A final thought: What ever happened to people taking care of themselves? At the first instance of harassment, I feel you need to make it known that you find this behavior unacceptable and will not tolerate it. If it’s not addressed, it gives that harasser ammunition to continue. It seems that in society today, people don’t stand up for themselves and want others to solve their problems. It’s almost like your still a child and running to Mommy for help.
Once, I had a coworker touch me in an inappropriate manner. I immediately told him to get his hand off of me, and I've never had a problem again. It might have been an innocent gesture on his part, or it might have been him testing me to see if he could get away with it. I obviously can't say what he was thinking, but I can tell you that he very clearly understood what I was thinking, and unless he was willing to deal with a pretty severe fall out, he never tried anything like that with me again. I reported it to my superiors just to have it documented in case there was any further trouble, but I didn't depend on them to take care of it for me. DB