Category Archives: Employment Contracts

Houston Law Firm Fires Pregnant Employees.

18 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by in Arbitration, EEOC, Employment Contracts, Employment Law, Gender Discrimination, Law Office Management, Pregnancy Discrimination

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Wayne Wright Fired Another Pregnant Worker, by Thomas J. Crane, San Antonio Employment Law Blog

http://tinyurl.com/q57966e

A law firm in Houston, Texas, fired a female employee because she became pregnant. The employee filed a charge against the firm with the EEOC, and then sued the firm. You would think that, if the firm somehow missed that this was an employment no-no, this experience educated management at the firm.

Unfortunately, that was not the case. The firm, which has offices in several locations, fired a paralegal from its El Paso firm when she became pregnant. The paralegal sued the firm, but this one has a twist. The firm invoked an arbitration agreement.

The matter went up to the El Paso Court of Appeals, which reversed the trial court. The paralegal’s case will go to arbitration. Why wasn’t this a slam dunk against the firm? -CCE

Will New DOL Rules Create Overtime Pay for Contract Lawyers?

09 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by in At-Will Employment, Contract Law, Employment Contracts, Employment Law, Overtime, Overtime Exemption

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Feds Could Change OT Pay Rules for Attorneys, by Gabe Friedman, Big Law Business, Bloomberg BNA (with hat tip to William P. Statsky!)

https://bol.bna.com/feds-could-change-ot-pay-rules-for-attorneys/

 

Dozens of contract attorneys voiced concerns about the health of their profession in letters and comments sent to the U.S. Department of Labor during the past two months as the federal agency weighs a change to overtime pay rules.

The DOL is considering its first revisions since 2004 to the Fair Labor Standards Act section 13(a)(1), which, as currently written, creates an overtime exemption for licensed attorneys, as well as other professionals. A comment period closed on Friday. Specifically, the DOL is contemplating whether to change which primary job duties trigger an exemption and whether to increase the standard salary threshold that triggers an exemption, currently set at $455 per week. It is also considering whether to create a mechanism to automatically increase this amount over time.

Taken together, the letters paint a picture of the contract attorneys, who review documents as part of the discovery phase of litigation, as a struggling group whose wages have fallen in recent years, particularly after the recession as the market for legal services has slumped. . . .

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A Different Kind of Employment Contract.

09 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by in Boilerplate Forms, Contract Law, Employment Contracts, Employment Law

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The Employment Contract Between Bilbo Baggins and the Dwarves, by Louis J. Sirico, Jr., Legal Skills Blog

http://tinyurl.com/qdt9krl

Louis J. Sirico, Jr., posted this interesting observation about employment contract law. If you have not read the book or seen the movie, The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien, this example is going to sound a bit odd.

Before Bilbo Baggins is hired by dwarves to join a quest to conquer a dragon and take back a mountain full of gold, he must sign an unique employment contract. In the book, Mr. Tolkien wrote a fifty-three word employment contract. It is easy to read and understand.

In the movie, the director wanted something more dramatic. The writer took on the challenge and looked to real contracts including his own. The result is a doozy. -CCE

When Is An Offer of Employment Letter The Same As A Contract?

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by in Breach, Contract Law, Employment Contracts, Employment Law, Intentional Promise, Religious Discrimination

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Federal Judge Allows Stephen Salaita’s Suit Against the University of Illinois to Proceed, by Jeremy Telman, ContractsProf Blog

http://tinyurl.com/o7flplx

In a case we have been following for a year (here, here, and here, for example), Stephen Salaita is suing the University of Illinois for withdrawing its offer to hire him to teach in its American Indian Studies Program after discovering some intemperate anti-Zionist tweets Mr. Salaita had posted. . . .

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Breach of Contract Claims Against Allstate by Its Employees.

01 Thursday May 2014

Posted by in Contract Law, EEOC, Employment Contracts, Employment Law, Intentional Misrepresentation

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New York Times Report on Litigation Challenging an Allstate Waiver Agreement, by Jeremy Telman, Contracts Prof Blog

http://bit.ly/1kwF7GI

According to this article in today’s New York Times, 6,200 Allstate employees, who joined its Neighborhood Agents Program in the 1980s and 1990s, were called into meetings in 1999 at which they were told that they would now proceed as independent contractors, forfeiting health insurance, their retirement accounts or profit-sharing, and terminating the accrual of their pension benefits.   If they wanted to continue to sell Allstate insurance, they had to sign waivers in which they agreed not to sue the insurer.  Thirty-one agents signed but have now sued nonetheless, alleging age discrimination and breach of contract.

They sued thirteen years ago, but the case is still far from over.  They are still seeking class certification.  The Times article indicates that cases such as this one are hard to win, but the judge in this case has already stated that those that signed the waivers were made substantially worse off, that Allstate’s claimed corporate reorganization was actually a disguised staff reduction, and that Allstate’s conduct was ‘self-serving and, from most perspectives, underhanded.’  In addition, Allstate seems to have misrepresented to the agents the consequences of not signing the waiver, having told the agents that they would be barred for life from soliciting business from their former customers.  Allstate has already paid $4.5 million to settle an age-discrimination claim brought by the EEOC on behalf of 90 of the agents.

Duty to Arbitrate Survives End of Employment Contracts.

05 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by in 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, Arbitration, Arbitration, Collective Bargaining, Employment Contracts, Employment Law, Fair Labor Standards Act, United States Supreme Court

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Sixth Circuit Holds That Duty To Arbitrate Survives Expiration Of Employment Contract, Requires Individual Arbitration, by Gregory V. Mersol, Baker & Hostetler

http://tinyurl.com/q7yg9s5

With the Supreme Court having issued a series of decisions overruling many of the roadblocks to the enforcement of arbitration agreements in the class context, we are now seeing more courts fill in the gaps as to whether and when employers may rely on such agreements.

The latest of these is the case of Huffman v. The Hilltop Companies, LLC, Case No. 13-3938 (6th Cir. Mar. 27, 2014), which concerned the question of whether the duty to arbitrate and limits to class arbitration extend beyond termination.  In one respect, the decision was obvious, but in another, it represents the growing, if at time reluctant, acceptance by courts of the enforceability of arbitration agreements. . . .