A former employee cannot sue the socialite wife of NFL Hall of Famer and sportscaster Ahmad Rashad for telling her to lock her two-year-old daughter in the dogs' cage while she walked the dogs, a New York appeals court has ruled.

Sale Johnson and Ahmad Rashad

Three former members of Sale Johnson's staff sued her in 2006, alleging a litany of mistreatment while they worked for her before she married Rashad. She fired personal assistants Carol Ann Epifani and Kelly Supple after only a few months of employment; Agnetta Oliverre quit her laundress job in August 2005.

The suit portrayed Johnson as demanding and demeaning of her employees. Among other things, she allegedly required the plaintiffs to share a bathroom with her dogs –- which meant having to step over training pads soaked with the dogs' urine.

Johnson divorced New York Jets owner Woody Johnson in 2001 and became Rashad's fourth wife in November 2007. “When I hire people they are expected to do as they are told or they can go home,” the complaint quoted her as saying.

On one occasion, Oliverre alleged, Johnson called at 10 p.m. and demanded that she come to her house and walk her dogs. When Oliverre said she could not leave her daughter, Johnson allegedly “demanded that Plaintiff Oliv[ ]erre bring the little girl and lock her in the dogs' cage while Plaintiff Oliv[ ]erre walked the dogs.”

In a recent opinion, the New York Appellate Division said Johnson's alleged conduct was “unquestionably objectionable” but was not “so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to state a cause of action to recover damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress.”

“With respect to what appears to be the most egregious allegation,” the court said, referring to the proposed caging of Oliverre's daughter, “the complaint does not allege that Oliverre did so, or that Johnson actually forced her to do so.”

The plaintiffs also alleged that Johnson forbade them from speaking to each other and made them stand up for the duration of the workday.

The appeals court allowed the case to proceed on a claim alleging Johnson slandered Supple by telling Oliverre and another employee that she fired Supple for stealing. But plaintiffs' attorney Moshe Mortner said Supple would not be pursuing that claim.

By Matthew Heller
7/22/09