Greip, Plaintiff v. Yamaha Motor Co. U.S.A., Inc. Defendant Background:Defendant Yamaha Motor Corporation U.S.A., Inc. (“Yamaha”) promotes its snowmobile products by sponsoring Yamaha’s Snowcross Race Team. Race team members represent Yamaha during the racing events. Yamaha employed plaintiff Geoffrey Greip to work as a fulltime mechanic on Yamaha’s racing team for the 1998-99 race season. Greip and Yamaha entered a written, one year employment agreement that expired on June 1, 1999. Greip earned $2,692.30 per month under this agreement. In the evening of February 21, 1999, sponsors of the race held an awards banquet attended by hundreds of people. Greip and other members of the race team sat at a long table with people associated with other teams. Greip began joking “back and forth” with a woman at the end of the table and it culminated into what Greip described as a “show me, dare me” type of thing. Greip dared the woman, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”. Greip then stood up, unbuckled and unzipped his pants, and opened them up for the woman to see. After the awards banquet, team members told Yamaha’s snowmobile coordinator Greip’s bad behavior at the banquet. He investigated the reports by talking to witnesses he could locate. Eckstrom, the manager of the Arctic Cat team Muetz that Greip had embarrassed Yamaha by exposing his penis at the awards banquet. Muetz, the snowmobile coordinator, discharged Greip from his employment with Yamaha, and was terminated. Greip admitted to exposing himself, during this conversation, and said he wanted to “express himself and gain attention for himself”. As a result of his termination Greip received $8,937 in unemployment compensation benefits. Because Greip’...
