Category Archives: Race Discrimination

Want The Jury to Pay Attention? Use Good Storytelling Skills.

17 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by in Employment Law, Jury Persuasion, Litigation, Race Discrimination, Trial Tips and Techniques

≈ Comments Off on Want The Jury to Pay Attention? Use Good Storytelling Skills.

Tags

, , ,

25 Million Reasons To Tell A Good Story, by John Hyman, Ohio Employer’s Law Blog

http://www.ohioemployerlawblog.com/2012/06/25-million-reasons-to-tell-good-story.html

Trying an employment case to a jury is an art. You are limited by a jury’s attention span (which, by the way, is getting worse as a result of 1,000 channel cable systems and 140 character tweets) to convey your message as quickly and as simply as possible. Complex legal arguments are out; creative storytelling built around a unified theme is in. . . .

Continue reading →

Sixth Circuit Takes a Look at Employee’s Age, Race, and Sex Discrimination Claim.

27 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by in 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, Employment Law, Gender Discrimination, Race Discrimination, Wrongful Termination

≈ Comments Off on Sixth Circuit Takes a Look at Employee’s Age, Race, and Sex Discrimination Claim.

Tags

, , , ,

Dis-Orderly Conduct: Hospital Security Guard Fired After Incident With Psychiatric Patient Cannot Advance Discrimination Claims, by Alexis B. Kasacavage, Bingham Greenebaum Doll, LLP Blog  

http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=729cc33f-832f-49e3-97f6-7a1c3c8f1997

Interesting analysis on how the courts came to the same conclusion but for different reasons. -CCE

 In Loyd v. Saint Joseph Mercy Oakland, et al., the Sixth Circuit recently upheld a Michigan district court’s decision to dismiss a 52-year-old African-American female security guard’s age, race and sex discrimination claims arising from her discharge following an incident with a combative psychiatric patient at the hospital where she worked.

Continue reading →

Ignore Duty For Litigation Holds At Your Peril.

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Discovery, E-Discovery, Employment Law, Litigation Hold, Preservation, Race Discrimination, Sanctions, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

≈ Comments Off on Ignore Duty For Litigation Holds At Your Peril.

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Don’t Hit That Delete Button: An Update On Litigation Holds For Employment Claims, by Andrew P. Sherrod, Inside Counsel Magazine

http://tinyurl.com/ka6thgo

By now, most companies are — or at least should be — well aware of their obligation to preserve relevant documents and electronic information when they reasonably anticipate litigation. This duty can arise in many contexts, but employment complaints are a prime example. Despite the multitude of judicial decisions and articles on the subject, companies continue to hinder their defense of employment claims by failing to undertake appropriate preservation measures.

The consequences of failing to implement and monitor a litigation hold in response to an employment claim were reinforced in a recent decision from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Hawley v. Mphasis Corp.

In Hawley, an employee of the defendant company claimed that he was discriminated against on the basis of his ethnicity in a number of ways during the course of his employment. The employee filed an EEOC charge of race and national origin discrimination in September 2009. The company terminated the employee in November 2009, and he thereafter filed a second EEOC charge, which was mailed to the company in December 2009. The employee then filed a discrimination suit in January 2012 against the company under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 and state civil rights laws.

During his employment, the plaintiff received a company-issued laptop computer on which he was required to perform his work. After his termination, the employee returned the computer to the company in December 2009. The next month, the company reassigned the computer to another employee, permanently deleting all of the plaintiff’s data.

The company also waited until April 2012 — almost three months after the filing of the plaintiff employee’s lawsuit and more than two years after his EEOC charges — to instruct the plaintiff’s supervisor and several other employees to preserve all documents and communications related to the plaintiff. . . .

Note Limited Time to File Employment Discrimination Charge!

14 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by in Anti-Retaliation, Bullying, Disabilities, EEOC, Employment Law, Fair Labor Standards Act, Gender Discrimination, Harassment, Hostile Work Environment, Minimum Wage, Overtime, Pregnancy Discrimination, Race Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, Wrongful Termination

≈ Comments Off on Note Limited Time to File Employment Discrimination Charge!

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Time Limits For Filing A Charge, U.S. Equal Employment Commission

http://www.eeoc.gov/employees/timeliness.cfm

The anti-discrimination laws give you a limited amount of time to file a charge of discrimination. In general, you need to file a charge within 180 calendar days from the day the discrimination took place. The 180 calendar day filing deadline is extended to 300 calendar days if a state or local agency enforces a law that prohibits employment discrimination on the same basis. The rules are slightly different for age discrimination charges. For age discrimination, the filing deadline is only extended to 300 days if there is a state law prohibiting age discrimination in employment and a state agency or authority enforcing that law. The deadline is not extended if only a local law prohibits age discrimination.

Note: Federal employees and job applicants have a different complaint process, and generally must contact an agency EEO Counselor within 45 days. The time limit can be extended under certain circumstances.

Regardless of how much time you have to file, it is best to file as soon as you have decided that is what you would like to do.

Time limits for filing a charge with EEOC generally will not be extended while you attempt to resolve a dispute through another forum such as an internal grievance procedure, a union grievance, arbitration or mediation before filing a charge with EEOC. Other forums for resolution may be pursued at the same time as the processing of the EEOC charge. . . .

Whistleblower Comes Clean About Fake Classes for College Athletes.

04 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by in College Sport Research Institute, Employment Law, Intercollegiate Athletics, NCAA, Race Discrimination, Sports Law, Whistleblower

≈ Comments Off on Whistleblower Comes Clean About Fake Classes for College Athletes.

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In Fake Classes Scandal, UNC Fails Its Athletes—and Whistle-Blower, by Paul M. Barrett, Politics and Policy, BloombergBusinessweek

Sitting in Memorial Hall at the heart of the Chapel Hill campus of the University of North Carolina, Mary Willingham wondered what William Friday would want her to do. . . .

*     *     *

In his last decades he’d [William Friday] tried to stir discussion about whether commercialized intercollegiate athletics was distorting higher education. That’s why Willingham had approached Friday in his 92nd and final year. In private conversations, she’d told him about her mounting anxiety that rather than educating its recruited athletes, UNC was playing a shell game to keep them from needing to study at all. She’d told him about basketball and football stars who read at a grade school level. She confessed that she’d helped steer some of these young men—many of them black—into lecture classes that never met. Worst of all, given Carolina’s racial history, the phony courses were offered in the black studies department. . . .

Are Judges Are Killing the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

27 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by in Affirmative Action, Courts, Employment Law, Judges, Race Discrimination, Research, Trial Tips and Techniques

≈ Comments Off on Are Judges Are Killing the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

Tags

, , , , , ,

President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the 1964 Civ...

When it comes to employment cases, judges are killing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by the Hon. Richard George Kopf, Hercules and the umpire Blog

http://tinyurl.com/phw85vu

After providing some background about rulings on employment cases, Judge Kopf reveals that:

[M]y summary judgment dismissal rate was higher than the aggregate rate for the Northern District of Georgia. That is, my dismissal rate was four points higher than the rate in the Northern District of Georgia (86% v. 82%). That caused me to write this: “The fact is that the law on summary judgment motions in employment cases favors the granting of summary judgment motions in a high percentage of the cases and, not surprisingly, that is what you see happening in the Northern District of Georgia and with ‘yours truly’ too.”

*     *     *

 [V]ince Powers, my friendly nemesis, advised me about a powerful article that Nancy Gertner has written on this subject. Gertner now teaches law at Harvard, and was for many years one of the most distinguished federal trial judges in the nation. She is also a really great person with a warm and funny sense of humor. Here is Nancy’s article. I urge you to read what she has written. It will make you think hard.

If you have trouble accessing the link to the Nancy Gertner’s article, you can find it here: http://tinyurl.com/olfpxdz. CCE

“Must Read” for HR – Evidence of Hiring Discrimination Using Social Media.

24 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by in Affirmative Action, EEOC, Employment Law, Gender Discrimination, Race Discrimination

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Everyone knows by now that human resources professionals and employers use social media to screen potential employees. Studies now show that some employers illegally discriminate against applicants based on what they find. CCE 

Study Finds Evidence of Unlawful Discrimination in Using Social Media to Recruit Employees, posted by Jason Shinn, Michigan Employment Law Advisor

http://tinyurl.com/k63s24l

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (reported on 11/21/2013 by Jennifer DeVries) discussed a study showing bias in the hiring process when social media is used to screen job applicants. Because of the potential for unlawful discrimination and losing out on otherwise qualified job applicants, the article and study should be a “must read” for every human resource professional or anyone with hiring responsibilities.

“Supervisor” Defined by U.S. Supreme Court

04 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by in Employment Law, Harassment, Race Discrimination, Trial Tips and Techniques, United States Supreme Court

≈ Comments Off on “Supervisor” Defined by U.S. Supreme Court

Tags

, , , ,

Supreme Court refines Title VII standards, by Kevin B. Leblang and Robert N. Holtzman, Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP

http://bit.ly/1a45PkL

On June 24 2013 the US Supreme Court handed down opinions in two cases refining the standards applicable to claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. First, the court ruled that only employees with the authority to hire, fire or promote the alleged victim will be considered supervisors for purposes of Title VII harassment suits. Second, the Supreme Court applied a strict and employer-friendly causation standard to Title VII retaliation claims.

EEOC Loses Claim of Unlawful Discrimination Against Employer

24 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by in Class Actions, Criminal History, EEOC, Employment Law, Race Discrimination

≈ Comments Off on EEOC Loses Claim of Unlawful Discrimination Against Employer

Tags

, , ,

 EEOC Smacked Down in Rare Employer Win in Defending Claim of Unlawful Discrimination, by Jason Shinn, Michigan Employment Law Advisor
http://bit.ly/17hzWaK