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
It’s a situation any Human Resources professional might find themselves in – circumstances require you to effectuate a termination in short order and you have to scramble to calculate the employees’ correct final pay and prepare a paycheck. But what if the wage statement is not ready? Does the law require employers to provide a wage statement to a terminated...
Question: We just went through a five-person layoff, and one of the individuals laid off (an African American) has hired a lawyer and is threatening to sue for racial discrimination. I have enormous confidence in the fairness of the individual manager making the layoff selections, and those selections were based on years of performance ratings. However, the lawyer hired by our...
Question: One of our male supervisors wants to fire a female employee who complained that he was sexually harassing her. The harassment allegations appear to have some substance: he asked her for pictures of herself in a bikini; told her to “stay off [her] knees,” which she viewed as sexual innuendo; and told her that her regulation length shorts were...
Question: We recently interviewed a candidate for a server position at our restaurant. During the interview, he informed us that he has an anxiety disorder, which causes him to have panic attacks out of the blue. Do we have to hire him? What if he had a panic attack in the middle of serving a customer?
Question: We are a California employer. After all the publicity surrounding class actions over meal and break periods, we instituted automatic warnings if employees take too long or too short a meal or rest break. Is anyone really enforcing this kind of discipline or are we wasting our time?
Question: My company relies on independent contractors, over whom we don’t exert control. They often joke around with each other. I’m not liable for employment discrimination if I terminate one of them after they complain about another, right?
Question: I’m the owner of a small record store. I have 13 sales clerks and 4 back room employees. Things aren’t great these days – but we get by. Fortunately, while people listen to music on their phones and the internet way more than they do CDs, we’ve refocused ourselves toward vintage record collectors and hardware sales. I just fired...
Question: We have an employee who we have been planning to terminate because of performance issues. This employee may have realized this was coming because he recently sent an email to a number of people claiming that our company policies violate the law. We have been aware of these possible problems before his emails were sent and already have been...
Question : One day during the lunch break, as I was heading to my car in the parking lot, I discovered two employees smoking what smelled like pot. I approached the employees and reprimanded them for engaging in illegal activities on the job, and told them that I would have them terminated. One of the employees, whose mother works at...
Question: A friend just told me that we have to revise our Employee Handbook. He claims we no longer can say that our employees are employed “at will.” They are. Why can’t we say it?
Erica ChenErica is an associate in the Costa Mesa office of Dorsey & Whitney and a member of the firm’s Labor and Employ...
Jennifer ServiceJen has experience providing advice on the full range of employment law issues to large, multi-state employers....
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, ...
Rebecca BernhardRebecca's experience spans traditional labor...
Marilyn ClarkA Partner in the Labor & Employment practice gr...
Michael DrokeMike started his career as a client, not a lawyer...
Katie Ervin CarlsonKatie helps employers make day-to-day decisions that...
Aaron GoldsteinAaron is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Jillian KornblattJillian is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Laura LestradeLaura began practicing at Dorsey in 1992 and has s...
Jessica LinehanJessica is a Partner in the Labor and Employment gr...
Ryan MickFor more than a decade, Ryan has counseled corpo...
Melissa RaphanMelissa is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor and Employ...
Gabrielle WirthEmployers turn to Gabrielle for guidance on how they...