Civil Rights › Civil Procedure

Labor & Employment E-Note - May 14, 2013

In This Issue: - Court Rules NLRB's Workplace Union Notices Violated Law - NLRB Urges Regional Directors to Maintain High Settlement Rate - EEOC Seeing Rising Number of Age Discrimination Complaints - OSHA...more

Fenwick Employment Brief - May 2013

The NLRB's controversial requirement that employers post notices informing employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act (as reported in our January and May 2012 FEBs) has been held unconstitutional by the...more

The Force is Sometimes Against Us

Julie Gilman Veronese sued Lucasfilm Ltd. in 2009 after she was hired—and then fired—as an assistant to the estate manager at George Lucas’s San Anselmo estate. She claimed she was fired because she was pregnant....more

The U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Extraterritorial Lawsuit Against Shell Oil

The United States Supreme Court, in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, recently restricted the scope of the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (“ATS”), a 224-year-old law often used to invoke jurisdiction in suing...more

"My Prior Complaint Was One Of The Reasons For The Adverse Employment Action": Mixed Motive Theories For Retaliation Claims Under...

Recently, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, which addresses the causation standard for retaliation claims under Title VII. The Supreme Court has already held...more

California Employment Law Notes - May 2013

Kenneth Hatai sued his employer (CalTrans) and his supervisor (Sameer Haddadeen), alleging discrimination based on his Japanese ancestry and the fact that he was not of Arab ancestry like Haddadeen. The case was tried to a...more

EEOC Makes Protecting Rights Of LGBT Workers A Top Priority

As the debate over gay marriage continues to intensify throughout the country, so does the issue of workplace rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. LGBT workers currently face substantial...more

It's Not Defamation if No One Knows It's You -- Sammy Hagar Defeats Defamation Claim

The first element of defamation is sometimes forgotten. The defamatory statement must be about the plaintiff. In most instances that will be self-evident, but sometimes the identity of the person being defamed will be known...more

Monty Green v. The City of New York, et al.

Complaint

More importantly, at no time, did any internal investigator observe him solicit anyone for sexual favors in exchange for monies; observe him hire anyone as a sex worker to perform sexual favors for others in exchange for...more

Courts Hold Employers In Contempt For Violating EEOC Settlement Agreements

Employers that ignore consent decrees (court-approved settlement agreements) may be held in contempt of court and subject to additional fines, sometimes totaling $1,000 for each day of noncompliance. Recent contempt orders by...more

Pennsylvania Court Denies Certification Of Disability Discrimination Claims

In the vast majority of discrimination cases, there is little dispute over whether the plaintiff is actually in a protected group. For example, in sex discrimination cases, for the most part, they are either male or female;...more

Kiobel: Major U.S. Jurisdictional Limitation For Overseas Actions

Much of the public has never heard of the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS,” 28 U.S.C. § 1350), but this law, dating back to the founding of the country, recently has had enormous implications for multinational corporations and...more

HIV-Positive Patient Wins Suit Over Doc’s “Unreasonable Fear”

A California appeals panel has reversed a lower court verdict denying the claims of an HIV-positive woman whose surgery was canceled at the last minute by an anesthesiologist who was worried he might contract the disease....more

Supreme Court Narrows Application Of Alien Tort Statute

The Supreme Court recently sharply narrowed the potential application of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which allows foreign plaintiffs to bring civil actions in U.S. district courts for torts committed in violation of the law...more

How to Use the “Wall of Wrong” to Determine if a Proposed Defamation Case is a SLAPP -- Shaheen Sadeghi v. Delilah Snell

The tale starts with an article in OC Weekly. The article was about a guy named Shaheen Sadeghi. The article was extremely favorable to Sadeghi, referring to him as the “Curator of Cool” and discussing his amazing success in...more

United States Supreme Court Decides Question of Corporate Liability Under Alien Tort Statute On Broader Grounds

In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., No. 10-1491, 2013 WL 1628935 (U.S. Apr. 17, 2013), the Supreme Court of the United States addressed the circuit split that arose following the 2010 decision of the United States Court...more

Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum: Beyond the Alien Tort Statute—Broadly Extending the Presumption Against the Extraterritorial...

Since the Second Circuit decided Filártiga v. Pena-Irala in 1980, plaintiffs have deployed the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”) to great effect against multinational corporations. The statute — which had lain dormant since 1789 —...more

U.S. Supreme Court Curbs Extraterritorial Reach of the Alien Tort Statute

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., No. 10-1491 pertaining to the reach of the Alien Tort Statute (“ATS”). This decision states that the ATS does not apply to conduct...more

Anti-SLAPP Law Does Not Protect Civil Extortion by Attorneys

Despite the prohibitions against doing so, some attorneys can’t resist throwing a threat of criminal action into their demand letters. They apparently think (if they give it any thought at all) that an express or veiled...more

Appellate Court: Tenured Teachers May be Terminated for “Disability” Without Violating CFEPA

The Connecticut Appellate Court yesterday released two notable employment law decisions. They won’t become “official” until April 30, 2013, so you have some time to digest them. I’ll cover one today and leave the other for a...more

"US Supreme Court Greatly Restricts Scope of Alien Tort Claims; Holds Statute Does Not Apply Extraterritorially"

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its long-awaited opinion in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, No. 10–1491 (U.S. Apr. 17, 2013), a significant decision holding that the so-called “Alien Tort Claims Act” or “Alien Tort...more

Miguel Mendoza v. Reed K. Hamzeh

Court Rules that Attorney's Demand Letter is Not Protected under Anti-SLAPP Law

Following the prior decision of Flatley v. Mauro, the California Court of Appeal in Miguel Mendoza v. Reed K. Hamzeh finds that a demand letter from an attorney which threatens criminal prosecution is not protected under the...more

Recent Development on Corporate Liability in U.S. Courts for Conduct Outside the United States

This week the U.S. Supreme Court issued its much-awaited decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., which addressed the question of whether a federal court may recognize a cause of action under the Alien Tort Statute...more

The Final Breaths of the Alien Tort Statute

On April 17, 2013, the Supreme Court decided Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum. For all intents and purposes, the decision eliminates use of the federal Alien Tort Statute ("ATS") as an employment law weapon to be used against...more

Fenwick Employment Brief: Employee Asked To Wear French Maid's Costume Not Sexual Harassment

In Westendorf v. West Coast Contractors of Nevada, Inc., the Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a sexual harassment complaint, despite offensive comments made by plaintiff's supervisor and coworkers, including a request...more