Employment Law This Week: Constructive Discharge Claims, Class Waivers, Hiring Bias, Electronic Record-Keeping Rule, Equal Pay
The Connecticut Appellate Court recently ruled that a septuagenarian teacher’s claims that she was forced to resign because of age discrimination were untimely. The ruling distinguishes Connecticut law from a 2016 Supreme...more
On February 1, 2024, the Superior Court of Quebec decided that a senior executive with 35 years of service who had been constructively dismissed was not entitled to severance pay because he had declined the new position the...more
In Van Hee v Glenmore Inn Holdings Ltd., 2023 ABCJ 244 (Glenmore), the Alberta Court of Justice found that an employer’s mandatory vaccination policy was a reasonable, justified and lawful response to the extraordinary...more
Better to have the courage of your convictions. I'm sure you've heard of "quiet quitting," when an unhappy employee does the bare minimum to get by and keep drawing a paycheck, but doesn't care much about the job beyond...more
Federal Agency Charges Employee Was Forced to Resign After Company President Told Her Discriminate Against Women, Blacks and Older Workers - MINNEAPOLIS – TKO Construction Services violated federal law when it...more
Our June update includes cases on whether an employer notified of an employee’s pregnancy just before termination is liable for a pregnancy dismissal, whether an employer’s future discovery of a disability makes it...more
In Pham v. Qualified Metal Fabricators Ltd., 2023 ONCA 255, the Ontario Court of Appeal (OCA) found that unless an employee’s employment contract provides otherwise via an express or implied term, an employer’s unilateral lay...more
Asian Food Companies Failed to Prevent Sexual Harassment of Both Female and Male Employees, Federal Agency Charges - LOS ANGELES – Pacific Culinary Group, Inc. and CB Foods, Inc., two companies involved in the sale,...more
Until recently, an employee generally could not establish a constructive discharge claim (that they had been forced to resign due to intolerable conditions) without first demonstrating that they informed their employer about...more
The federal court for the Northern District of California recently declined to dismiss a former Al Jazeera International employee’s constructive wrongful termination claim against the news outlet, finding that requiring an...more
On October 4, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (which includes Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina) affirmed a lower court’s grant of summary judgment to an employer, in part, based...more
Trucking Company Subjected Women to Sex-Based Discrimination in Hiring, Federal Agency Charges - INDIANAPOLIS — The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today announced that it filed suit against Gypsum...more
Employees who resign from work, sue their employer, and assert “constructive discharge” shoulder a heavy burden to demonstrate that they had no choice but to resign. A recent decision of the Massachusetts Appeals Court,...more
On September 15, 2021, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of an employer. In Brown v. Austin, the Tenth Circuit found that an employee’s telework, weekend work, and...more
Employer Allowed Black Housekeeper to Racially Harass White Coworkers, Federal Agency Charges - MOORESVILLE, N.C. – T.M.F. Mooresville, LLC, operating as Hampton Inn & Suites in Mooresville, North Carolina, subjected white...more
A whistleblower is a term used in employment law for any employee who raises concerns about unlawful conduct. Arizona has a comprehensive whistleblower law that protects whistleblowers. This law makes it unlawful for an...more
Just six weeks after holding in Coutinho v. Ocular Health Centre Ltd. that Ontario Regulation 228/20 (IDEL Regulation) under the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) did not remove an employee’s common law right to claim...more
Too little, too late - employer could not cure fundamental breach - If an employer commits a repudiatory breach of contract, an employee is entitled to accept the breach by resigning. They can then claim unfair constructive...more
Last May, the government of Ontario filed Ontario Regulation 228/20 (IDEL Regulation) under the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA). The Regulation provides that an employee in a non-unionized workplace who, any time during...more
In McGuinty v. 1845035 Ontario Inc. (McGuinty Funeral Home), 2020 ONCA 816 (McGuinty), the Court of Appeal for Ontario upheld the Ontario Superior Court’s decision to award an employee one of the highest damage awards ever...more
On October 9, 2020, in Matthews v. Ocean Nutrition Canada Ltd., 2020 SCC 26, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC)—the highest court in the country—released a highly anticipated decision in an employee’s appeal of the Nova Scotia...more
In Pinter-Brown v. Regents of the University of California, the California Court of Appeal’s Second Appellate District recently reversed a blockbuster $13 million judgment that was entered against UCLA in favor of one of its...more
Constructive discharge is a form of wrongful termination under the Puerto Rico Unjust Dismissal statute, Act No. 80 of May 30, 1976 (“Act 80”). Unlike in traditional wrongful termination cases, plaintiffs alleging...more
St. Myers v. Dignity Health, 44 Cal. App. 5th 301 (2019) - Carla St. Myers worked as a nurse practitioner at a rural clinic that was part of a medical center owned and operated by Dignity Health. During her three years of...more
On January 1, 2020, California businesses faced several new laws that may significantly impact business operations, including AB 5 (codifying the “ABC” test) and AB 51 (restricting the use of mandatory arbitration). On the...more