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
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Question: I know you have written in the past about former in-house counsel suing their former employers in connection with their terminations. We have a slightly different twist on that situation. Our former in-house counsel has filed a qui tam lawsuit against our firm based on information he learned while employed and his supposition about what occurred after his employment...
Quirky Question # 155 A class action discrimination lawsuit was filed against our company. The proposed class included all African American employees who were employed during a specified time period. This group includes our former Vice President of Human Resources. We learned recently that the plaintiffs’ lawyers have met on several occasions with our former VP of HR. This troubles...
The Minnesota Supreme Court finally has ruled on Kidwell v. Sybaritic, Inc., Nos. A07-584 and 788 (June 24, 2010), the “in-house counsel as whistle-blower” case that was pending before it for more than 18 months. Unfortunately, the Court’s ruling has not brought clarity to this area of the law.
Quirky Question # 144: I’m confused. I thought we could review our employee’s email communications when sent out on our company’s equipment. Our electronic communications policy states clearly that we reserve the right to do so. I also thought we could review even privileged communications between our soon-to-be ex-employee and his attorney, if these communications were sent on our email...
Quirky Question # 111: We fired one of our in-house counsel. He now has sued us for a variety of claims, all of which we think are bogus. At the time his employment ended, we required him to turn in his company-owned computer. We are reviewing it and finding that it contains a treasure trove of information useful to our...
Quirky Question # 50: We are a small to mid-size company, with a relatively small legal department. We have a General Counsel. He, in turn, supervises two other attorneys. The General Counsel joined our company about two years ago, and frankly, his relationship with C-level executives has not been ideal. His relationship with the CEO has been particularly strained. The...
Quirky Question # 18: We recently terminated one of our executives. One of our standard practices when we terminate a senior executive is to check carefully his/her email communications for the preceding twelve months. When we checked this executive’s email communications, we discovered approximately eight messages to and from a private law firm. The message subject line was: “Personal, My...
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...
