Last month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed its earlier position that compensatory and punitive damages are not available to plaintiffs who allege violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)....more
For years, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has taken the administrative position that if a disabled employee can no longer perform his or her job, the employer must place that employee in a vacant position...more
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) only requires employers to provide accommodations that allow the disabled employee or applicant to perform the essential functions of the job. The employer is not required to shift or...more
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, overtime pay is calculated based on the employee’s “regular rate.” The regular rate includes not just base compensation, but bonuses, incentive pay, commissions and other forms of cash and...more
Employees can consider a working environment to be hostile due to sexual conduct, even when the workplace is all male or all female. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and federal courts have long held that...more
With the December 1 effective date approaching for the Department of Labor’s increase in the minimum salary for claiming most overtime exemptions, many employers are considering moving employees to the fluctuating workweek...more
How would your company react if legal counsel advised you that the mere act of recruiting on college campuses exposes the business to class action employment discrimination claims? Fortunately, this scenario will not happen...more
In recent years, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes North Carolina and South Carolina) has moved toward a position recognizing that certain workplace occurrences automatically meet the legal requirements for...more
On September 2, 2016, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland (which sits in the Fourth Circuit, along with North Carolina and South Carolina) held that the EEOC can move forward in its case against a...more
In order to reach a jury trial, plaintiffs in employment discrimination claims generally must provide evidence of intentional treatment that led to some adverse employment consequences. In some cases, plaintiffs attempt to...more
Rule 13a-14 issued under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requires that Chief Executive Officers and Chief Financial Officers certify the accuracy of the public company’s financial statements. Section 304 of SOX states that CEOs...more
Employees on approved Family and Medical Leave are entitled to reinstatement upon return to the same or an equivalent position. Commonly, when the employee is absent on leave, the employer discovers work performance issues...more
The National Labor Relations Act vests the NLRB with broad powers to correct violations of U.S. labor laws. Last month, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed the Board’s broad reach by affirming a decision ordering a...more
In recent years, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has begun finding separate companies jointly liable for compliance with federal labor laws under a joint or co-employment theory. Most notably, the Board has...more
Employers already know that Title VII prohibits discrimination on the basis of national origin and citizenship status. However, they may not be aware that the federal Immigration and Nationality Act also contains...more
Another week, another National Labor Relations Board decision concluding that a standard employee handbook policy violates employees’ rights to engage in protected concerted activity under Section 7 of the NLRA. This time,...more
Over the past several years, the National Labor Relations Board has repeatedly declared standard employee handbook policies illegal because it considered them to violate employees’ rights to engage in protected concerted...more
In a typical corporate transaction, the parties structure the deal as an asset purchase, whereby the buyer purchases essentially all of the company’s property, equipment, goodwill, customer lists, etc. If the asset purchase...more
The National Labor Relations Board continues its assault against standard employment policies considered to interfere with employee rights. This time, a federal administrative law judge accepted the Board counsel’s argument...more
The hospitality industry continues to face an increasing number of collective action lawsuits filed by tipped employees who claim that their employers failed to comply with minimum wage requirements for servers and related...more
When a terminated employee alleges that her firing resulted from discrimination or retaliation, employers often dispute those claims by noting that the employer never hired anyone to take the terminated employee’s position....more
7/26/2016
/ Appeals ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Harassment ,
Hiring & Firing ,
National Origin Discrimination ,
Protected Class ,
Religious Discrimination ,
Remand ,
Retaliation ,
Reversal ,
Termination ,
Title VII
Here is a common human resource scenario: An employee goes out of work on medical leave. While she is away from work, the managers or co-workers who cover her duties discover that the work can be readily accomplished without...more
7/19/2016
/ Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) ,
Appeals ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Dismissals ,
Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) ,
Legitimate Business Interest ,
Medical Leave ,
Reasonable Accommodation ,
Reduction in Hours ,
Reinstatement ,
Summary Judgment ,
Wage and Hour
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 Ragsdale decision rejected Department of Labor regulations stating that failure to provide employees with notice of leave rights was a per se violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act....more
Under the “hired to invent” doctrine, employees who develop intellectual property during the course of their employment generally have no ownership rights to such innovations. Earlier this month, the North Carolina Supreme...more
6/28/2016
/ Assignment of Inventions ,
Bonuses ,
Corporate Counsel ,
Failure To Pay ,
Hired To Invent Doctrine ,
IP Assignment Agreements ,
NC Supreme Court ,
Patent Ownership ,
Patents ,
Rescission ,
Reversal ,
Wage and Hour
Last month’s CRST decision by the U.S. Supreme Court raised hopes for employers seeking to recover attorneys’ fees from the EEOC after prevailing in litigation against the agency. Last week, the Eighth Circuit Court of...more