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 # 103: We recently opened operations in California and are concerned that our current PTO policy does not meet California state standards. We were caught unawares by the new Massachusetts Supreme Court case on vacation pay and know that the law on vacation policies differs from state to state. What should we be doing to protect ourselves from...
Quirky Question # 102: We’ve tried hard to institute and enforce an effective sexual harassment policy. Nevertheless, we still occasionally receive sexual harassment complaints from some of our employees. Recently, an employee sued us for sexual harassment. She claimed that she reported the harassment to a relatively low level supervisor and that he failed to take any action in response...
Ricci v. DeStefano, Supreme Court Holds Employer Liable for Trying to Avoid Claims of Adverse Impact Discrimination On June 29, the United States Supreme Court issued its highly-anticipated and highly-divisive decision in the “white firefighters case,” Ricci v. DeStefano, 557 U.S. __ (2009). This 5-4 decision may have significant implications for both “disparate impact” and “disparate treatment” discrimination claims. Disparate-treatment...
Quirky Question # 101: We recently hired a 49 year-old employee to manage one of our manufacturing facilities. The employee completed two weeks of paid training and began working at the beginning of the month. His role is central to the success of the facility. Less than a month into his new job, however, he called in sick. Shortly thereafter,...
Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., Age Discrimination Cases Under the ADEA On June 18, 2009, a sharply divided Supreme Court issued its decision in Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., No. 08-441. The 5-4 decision establishes that plaintiffs pursuing claims of age discrimination under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) will be held to the more stringent “but for”...
Quirky Question # 100: We have an employee who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, is under the care of a psychiatrist through the Veterans Administration and takes medication for this condition. He also chews tobacco at work. There have been a number of employee complaints about the disgusting nature of the tobacco habit. The employee claims that his psychiatrist...
Analysis of the Crawford Decision On January 26, 2009, the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee, No. 06-1595 (Argued October 8, 2008; decided January 26, 2009). The Supreme Court unanimously held that the anti-retaliation provision of Title VII reached an employee who “speaks out about discrimination not on...
CONTRASTS IN CLAIMS: EVALUATING EMOTIONAL DISTRESS—Part II— A “False Claim” Barbara Long, M.D., Ph.D., A.B.P.N. Employment law Title VII claims often include claims of significant emotional distress allegedly caused by inappropriate remarks, touches, and other behaviors in the workplace. When a supervisor, as opposed to a coworker, has been the alleged instigator of the reportedly offensive behavior, emotional distress claims...
Quirky Question # 98: We hired another company (we’ll call it Company ABC) to provide our firm with contract employees. Company ABC performs background checks on its employee pool, utilizing publicly available sources of information. We typically use a third-party vendor to perform background checks on the employees we hire, but we do not do so for the contract employees...
Quirky Question # 97: One of our employees became disabled. He successfully applied for Social Security benefits on the ground that he was permanently disabled from working. The EEOC now has filed an action against our company, contending that we discriminated against our former employee on the basis of his disability. If our employee is “permanently disabled from working,” how...
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...
