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A registered nurse complained to hospital management about patient safety practices. The hospital fired her shortly afterward, allegedly for improper and dangerous patient care. The nurse sued for retaliation and defamation. The California courts were left to decide if her termination based on a legitimate nonretaliatory reason.
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, written in 1906, portrays the harsh conditions immigrant workers faced in the meatpacking industry at the turn of the century. Sinclair’s novel helped pave the way for reform in the meatpacking industry and probably spawned the vegetarian movement, but that’s just neither here nor there.
by Mark I. Schickman Twenty years ago in Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the case of a female lifeguard who sued the city of Boca Raton for sexual harassment because her supervisor lifeguard, on duty with her on a local beach, subjected her to “uninvited and offensive touching,” made […]
Employees can be entitled to damages for emotional distress under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), a federal appeals court has ruled.
Most employees in the United States are employed “at will,” which simply means that either the employee or the employer can end the employment relationship for any legal reason, or no reason at all, at any time. The law at the federal level has no requirement of giving a particular notice period when terminating a […]
Employees may bring two types of Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)-related claims against their employers: first, interference with their rights under the FMLA, and, second, retaliation against them for requesting time off under the FMLA, exercising rights under it, or making a claim.
by Brittany E. Medio, Saul Ewing LLP The U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals—which covers Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—recently affirmed a lower court’s decision to dismiss an employee’s gender discrimination and retaliation claims against her former employer. The court found the employee was terminated not for engaging in protected activity but for violating the […]
The antiretaliation provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) new electronic record-keeping rule are set to be implemented on December 1 after a Texas federal judge denied a request for a preliminary injunction on November 28. The eventual fate of the rule isn’t known since Judge Sam Lindsay of the U.S. District Court […]
by Kara M. Maciel, Esq. and Dan Deacon, Esq., Conn Maciel Carey In part one of this article, we focused on how the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has become more aggressive in its whistleblower enforcement efforts. Together, the EEOC and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have recently taken steps to make it […]
by Kara M. Maciel, Esq. and Dan Deacon, Esq., Conn Maciel Carey Now more than ever, employers are at an increased risk of facing a retaliation complaint as regulatory rule changes and expansive federal laws make asserting these claims much easier for employees to prevail.