Real Life Employment Law
Nearly every day, executives and managers, and the in-house counsel and Human Resources professionals who work with them, are confronted with unanticipated questions regarding the workforce. Just when they think they have "seen it all," along comes a new and often stranger scenario involving an odd twist to an area they thought they fully understood. These individuals often find themselves back at square one when trying to construct an appropriate response and devise a creative solution to the problem presented. Sometimes these "Quirky Questions" can be resolved easily; other times, they implicate practical and legal issues that are not immediately apparent.
This Quirky Employment Questions Blog addresses unanticipated questions regarding the workforce.
We encourage you to submit your thoughts and reactions to the questions presented. We also encourage you to submit questions that you would like to see addressed, subject to these guidelines.
Stephen D. Bell
Michael Droke
Joseph W. Hammell
Sarah Andrews Herman
Ryan E. Mick
William J. Miller
Melissa Raphan
Gregory M. Saylin
Gabrielle Wirth
David C. SingerBLOG CONTACT INFO
E: Wirth.Gabrielle@dorsey.com
P: 714.800.1455
Quirky Question # 13: I read your Quirky Question # 12 regarding sexual harassment and the issue of whether the policies need to be tailored to minors. Your question alerted me to a related issue. Like the company described in your last question, our firm also employs a number of minors under age 18. We have a pre-employment and post-accident...
Quirky Question # 12: Our company employs a lot of minors. We have a policy prohibiting sexual harassment. It is written for our work force as a whole and is not tailored toward the high school students we employ. A friend of mine recently told me that our policy has to be understandable by the high school students for it...
Quirky Question # 11: Our firm uses non-competition agreements for a number of our key employees. The non-competition agreement was drafted by our outside counsel who tells us that it is enforceable. One of our managers who had signed such an agreement recently resigned. We just learned that she will be starting employment at our primary competitor, in a role...
Quirky Question # 10: Not long ago, a stray dog wandered into our warehouse. It did not hurt anyone but it apparently frightened one of our employees. In the days and weeks after the incident, our employee began behaving more and more bizarrely. She yelled at her supervisors and co-employees. In a conversation with our company’s President, she began yelling...
Quirky Question # 9: Two of our employees are involved in a romantic relationship. We recently learned that our male employee assaulted our female employee at her apartment. He was charged with domestic assault based on her report and convicted. We then tried to elicit information from our female employee about whether she felt her paramour posed a risk of...
Quirky Question # 8: We provide a number of our sales employees with company automobiles. We were wondering whether we could randomly test these individuals for alcohol or drug use. Needless to point out, we would like to ensure that employees driving our company vehicles do not endanger either themselves or members of the public.
Quirky Question # 7: Several years ago we employed an individual at our auto dealership. He resigned voluntarily. About eight months ago, we rehired him. During the course of the last eight months, he has worked more than 1250 hours. He recently injured his back at home and has missed 13 days of work. Because we cannot afford to have...
Quirky Question # 6: Our company operates a call center. One of our supervisors (Employee X) demonstrated two significant performance problems. First, he was verbally abusive to the employees he supervised. Second, he appeared to have a disproportionate number of “dropped” calls. Our suspicion is that he put the callers on “hold,” and left them on “hold” until they hung...
Quirky Question # 5: I read your Quirky Question # 4. Unlike your last reader, I am not in our company’s Human Resources Department. But I am the attorney within our Office of the General Counsel with responsibility for addressing employment issues. One of our HR representatives informed me that she had received a sexual harassment complaint by one of...
Quirky Question # 4: I am an HR Representative. One of my duties is to take complaints regarding workplace discrimination, including sexual harassment. One of our female employees recently complained to me that she feels as though she is being sexually harassed by one of our top salesmen. (He is not her supervisor, but she does work on the team...
Erica ChenErica is an associate in the Costa Mesa office of Dorsey & Whitney and a member of the firm’s Labor and Employ...
Jack SullivanJack is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employment group, where he focuses his practice on employment adv...
Ieva AubinAs an employment and business immigration attorney, ...
Michael DrokeMike started his career as a client, not a lawyer...
Matt DurhamMatt defends employers in Utah and throughout the ...
Aaron GoldsteinAaron is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Josh HughesJosh’s experience spans trial and appellate advoc...
Jillian KornblattJillian is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Laura LestradeLaura began practicing at Dorsey in 1992 and has s...
Ryan MickFor more than a decade, Ryan has counseled corpo...
Nick PappasNick litigates and counsels with respect to com...
Melissa RaphanMelissa is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor and Employ...
Gabrielle WirthEmployers turn to Gabrielle for guidance on how they...
