Publix sued over fatal shooting at Tarpon Springs store by Arunya Rouch
The March 30 fatal shooting of a Publix employee in the store’s parking lot was “the natural and predictable result of the chain of events set in motion by Publix that morning,” according to a lawsuit filed today on behalf of the estate of shooting victim Greg Janowski.
The lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $15,000 for Janowski’s wife, mother and his four children.
Officials with Publix could not immediately be reached for comment.
Arunya Rouch
Janowski was killed by Arunya Rouch, who had been fired earlier that morning, according to investigators. The lawsuit, filed by attorney Barry Cohen in Pinellas County, alleges that Publix management created a toxic atmosphere at the Tarpon Springs store where both worked and knew Rouch had made threats against Janowski and had a history of threats and erratic behavior. When Rouch was fired, the store failed to take any steps to protect employees or the public, the suit states.
But the lawsuit is not just about the shooting and the events that led up to it. Cohen, expecting Publix to argue the company is exempt from such a suit under state worker compensation law, argues that the law is unconstitutional and fails to protect workers like Janowski.
In the lawsuit, Arunya Rouch, who came to this country from Thailand in the 1990s, is described as being a hard worker “whose willingness to work hard bordered on fanaticism. Her job performance was of tantamount importance to her.”
Arunya Rouch was such a hard worker that she was given preferential treatment when it came to the assignment of overtime hours, which created conflict within the store, according to the suit.
According to the suit:
Publix managers receive bonuses based largely on store and department profitability. Though Publix frowns on overtime because of the cost, the meat and seafood department at the Tarpon Springs store was shorthanded and overtime would be more cost-effective.
Store manager Mickey McPhee and seafood and meat department manager Ron Chmielorz opted to give Arunya Rouch the bulk of those overtime opportunities – without letting other employees know they existed – because Arunya Rouch could perform her work using the fewest amount of overtime hours. Because no employees knew of the overtime opportunities, they did not know that when Rouch was seen working off her shift, she was not working off the clock.
That set up another conflict with company policy. Publix encourages employees to help reduce costs by informing on other workers who are violating policy, according to the suit.
On Thursday, March 25, Janowski – who was never told about any overtime opportunities – once again saw Rouch working outside her shift. He confronted her about working off the clock. Arunya Rouch became confrontational, telling Janowoski she worked off the clock all the time. She threatened Janowski, saying if he reported her or filed a complaint with management, she would kill him.
The next day, Janowski left work at about 4 p.m. Later that night, he called Publix, as usual, to talk to a meat department employee about that day’s sales. That employee told Janowski a frightening story. When the next week’s schedule was posted, Rouch crossed Janowski’s name off. When the employee asked why, Rouch said, ‘Because he’s dead – I killed him.”
McPhee and Chmielorz were told about the threats and, sometime between March 26 and March 29, they spoke with Janowski about them.
On March 30, Arunya Rouch woke up at 6:30 a.m. and drove to work. She was called in to the manager’s office, where McPhee and Chmeilorz fired her. She had a long history of making threats, including an incident in November 2009. Witnesses said she was heard “wailing as if her heart had been broken and she was about to die,” the suit states.
Investigators say that after being fired, she went back home, grabbed a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, and came back. She walked up to Janowski, who was parked in his usual spot in the parking lot and talking to his wife. Seconds after Janowski hung up the phone, Rouch pumped four shots through the driver’s side window, hitting Janowski in the head and chest, killing him almost instantly. Then Arunya Rouch ran into the store, where she got into a gun battle with police before being wounded.
The lawsuit contends Publix was negligent in the way it handled the overtime situation and termination and in not warning Janowski that the store had fired an employee who had threatened to harm him if she were fired.
The suit says Publix also did not have a threat assessment team or other ways of handling a distraught, unstable employee who made threats and was terminated, and failed to conduct proper employee background investigations. The lawsuit contends that had Publix conducted a background search on Rouch, it would have found not only was she unstable, but that there was a Web page of her firing a 9 mm at a range, under the caption “Don’t Mess With The Little Thai Girl.”
It also argues that the state’s worker compensation law is unconstitutional because it does not properly protect employees.
Cohen says if Publix seeks immunity from the lawsuit under Florida’s Workers Compensation law, which he expects, he will seek to have the law declared unconstitutional.
“This is going to have a big impact on the business community, the business community is going to be very concerned about this lawsuit,” Cohen said.
The lawsuit states the current statute is the ultimate product of legislative attempts in Florida dating back to 1935 “to shield businesses from tort liability by placing restrictions and limitations on remedies available to injured employees and their families.”
“When the employer does something intentional or does something so abusive that there’s no recourse by the employee in the court system, that’s the equivalent to giving the employee no rights at all,” Cohen said.
Reporter Steve Andrews contributed to this report.
