Fake News: Bartlesville Woman NOT Awarded $1.4 Million After Suing Male Co-Workers For Excessive Farting.

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Bartlesville Woman NOT Awarded $1.4 Million After Suing Male Co-Workers For Excessive Farting.

Was 32-year-old Susan Goldstein of Bartlesville, Oklahoma awarded $1.4 million after she sued her male coworkers for excessive farting? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a website imitating the logo and domain name of Fox News. It is not true.

The story originated from an article published by foxnews-us.com (not foxnews.com) on August 20, 2018 titled "Bartlesville Woman Awarded $1.4 Million After Suing Male Co-Workers For Excessive Farting." (archived here) which opened:

Susan Goldstein 32, of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, took her employer and co-workers to court after months of inaction to her regular complaints of the men in her office farting and polluting the air. Ms Goldstein worked for a marketing company with five men in a small office. 'I was new to the company and the men were clearly not used to working with women' Ms Goldstein said. 'They would constantly fart out loud and then laugh amongst themselves'.

After Ms Goldstein complained to management the men's behaviour became worse. 'They would come to my desk on the pretense of discussing work and silently fart while standing right next to me' complained Ms Goldstein. 'The smell was horrendous and I would regularly get headaches and feel sick'. My boyfriend would constantly complain that I smelt like dirty male ass. The smell was in my hair and on my clothes and skin. It turned him off so much that we stopped having sex and eventually broke up'.

On the same day the same website also claimed the woman lived in Montgomery, Alabama:

Montgomery Woman awarded $1.4 million after suing male co-workers for excessive farting.

Susan Goldstein 32, of Montgomery, Alabama, took her employer and co-workers to court after months of inaction to her regular complaints of the men in her office farting and polluting the air. Ms Goldstein worked for a marketing company with five men in a small office.

The site is part of a network of sites all imitating major U.S. media brands and all publishing fake articles, often the same ones with names and locations changed. Don't fall for them!

That doesn't mean all farting lawsuit stories are false though: only a few months ago a man in Australia tried to sue his boss for maliciously farting on him. Unfortunately for the guy he lost the lawsuit:

Employee loses $1.9m bullying case after claiming his boss farted on him maliciously

An Australian man has lost his AU$1.8 million (NZ$1.9 million) workplace bullying case after claiming his supervisor farted on him maliciously. Fifteen witnesses were called to testify during the 18-day trial at the Victoria Supreme Court. David Hingst claimed supervisor Greg Short abused and farted on him during his time with Construction Engineering Australia from 2008 to 2009.

We wrote about foxnews-us.com before, here are our most recent articles about other hoaxes from the site:

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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