Jiudicy Inc., doing business as Labor Finders, will pay $150,000 to settle a retaliation lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency announced. However, Jiudicy strongly denied any liability or wrongdoing.

According to the EEOC's suit, Jiudicy unlawfully terminated a female office administrator in retaliation for reporting sexual harassment. The employee worked at Juidicy's Cumming, Ga., location and reported that she received sexually harassing phone calls from her supervisor. The company conducted an internal investigation into her complaint, according to the EEOC. The company fired her three days after the complaint, citing six separate reasons for the termination.

As part of the settlement, the two-year consent decree includes provisions for equal employment opportunity training, reporting and posting of anti-discrimination notices.

Juidicy President Anthony Giudicy strongly denies any wrongdoing in this case.

“We actually won in three lower courts, where it was thrown out on summary judgment,” he said.

The case settled at the appellate level because the insurance company believed it was the most cost-efficient way to proceed, according to Giudicy. “It was their call, it wasn’t ours,” he said.

“It was thrown out three times and the EEOC kept coming and coming,” Giudicy said. “This is just another example of the federal government overreaching and putting the clamps on small business.”

Jiudicy Inc. operates 14 Labor Finders locations in Georgia and six in Florida. Labor Finders International Inc. is an industrial labor staffing franchise company based in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. It ranks 53rd on Staffing Industry Analysts’ list of largest U.S. staffing firms and 17th on the list of largest U.S. industrial staffing firms.