The Briefing – Late Night, Early Dismissal: The Santos-Kimmel Copyright Case
(Podcast) The Briefing – Late Night, Early Dismissal: The Santos-Kimmel Copyright Case
Fifth Circuit Affirms District Court’s Striking of Class Allegations
Eighth Circuit Reverses Dismissal of Putative Class Claims
Nota Bene Episode 98: The U.S. Supreme Court’s Mark on U.S. Antitrust Law for 2020 with Thomas Dillickrath and Bevin Newman
Class Action Suit Against Instagram for New Terms of Service Dismissed
This newsletter reviews five recent significant judicial decisions on health, safety and working conditions: Did an employee's impending dismissal mean that his suicide attempt was work-related and therefore a...more
In September 2023, federal trial courts in Wisconsin and Kentucky issued decisions dismissing plaintiffs’ claims related to employers’ COVID-19 vaccination and testing requirements....more
On August 26, 2022, Chief U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann for the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania dismissed a putative class action representing approximately 100 healthcare...more
On November 9, 2021, in United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Canada Local 333 v. Paragon Protection Ltd. (Paragon), Arbitrator Von Veh in Ontario dismissed a union’s policy grievance and upheld a mandatory COVID-19...more
Since vaccines have become readily available, employers have been grappling with whether they should mandate vaccines for employees. Most companies have chosen to “strongly encourage” employees instead of mandating, and many...more
Last week, a federal district court judge in Texas dismissed a lawsuit filed by a group of Houston hospital workers who object to their employer’s requirement that all employees receive the COVID-19 vaccination. The...more
Concluding that a highly publicized lawsuit challenging Houston Methodist Hospital’s mandatory vaccination policy failed to state viable legal claims and misrepresented certain facts, federal Judge Lynn Hughes dismissed the...more
A California court just struck a second blow to the lawsuit brought by the wife of a California construction worker who alleged that her husband contracted COVID-19 from his workplace and then spread it to her. We previously...more
One year into the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. courts are wrestling with a growing number of new legal theories related to COVID-19. Not surprisingly, California – the most populous state with some of the most employee friendly...more
On a random Thursday last January in a nondescript state courthouse in north Texas, a union representing a group of airline pilots filed a workplace lawsuit seeking to halt flights to China. Their concern centered around an...more
On November 1, a federal court in New York dismissed a lawsuit filed by several Amazon workers that largely sought to compel the company to comply with public health guidance. The case, Palmer v. Amazon.com Inc., was notable...more
On November 1, 2020, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Palmer et al. v. Amazon.com Inc. et al., No. 20-cv-2468, 2020 WL 6388599, dismissed a lawsuit against Amazon alleging failures to...more
One question that employers have been asking since the onset of the pandemic is whether they could be sued by employees who get sick as a result of being exposed to an infected coworker. Plaintiffs’ and defendants’ lawyers...more
COVID-19 and Unprecedented: Litigation Insights, Issue 22 In our 22nd edition of Unprecedented, our weekly update on COVID-19-related litigation, we see cases against employers continue to rise, and offer insight for...more
This 21st edition of Unprecedented, our weekly update on COVID-19-related litigation, pairs defense victories with new claims. Lenders obtained the dismissal of a lawsuit claiming agent fees under the PPP program, and...more
This 20th edition of Unprecedented, our weekly update on COVID-19-related litigation, finds both plaintiffs and defendants with reasons to celebrate. Insurance carriers avoided consolidation of coverage disputes in...more
This newsletter reviews five notable court holdings over the last semester. Moral harassment: the employer's investigation is valid even if all victims have not been interviewed (Cass, Soc., 8 January 2020, n°18-20.151) ...more
The Rhode Island Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit against an employer who terminated an employee for refusing to submit to a reasonable suspicion drug test, even though the employee’s odd behaviors could have...more
In a workplace safety whistleblower lawsuit recently filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, an air conditioning technician claims he was fired by his employer, HT Airsystems of Florida, LLC, in...more
A federal court recently dismissed a suit brought by meat processing workers that asked the court to force the plant owner to comply with workplace safety guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...more
“Claims of sexual harassment typically involve the behavior of fellow employees. But not always,” said a federal appeals court in Gardner v. CLC of Pascagoula, LLC. The case shows employers must take employee complaints of...more
In addition to OSHA rules, many safety-sensitive businesses use ANSI or other standards organizations’ guidelines to develop their safety programs. Earlier this month, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal of...more
“Claims of sexual harassment typically involve the behavior of fellow employees. But not always.” So begins a recent opinion from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that illustrates the dangers of failing to take an employee’s...more
In light of a recent decision from the Indiana Supreme Court, Indiana employers—and construction companies in particular—should review their contracts and subcontracts to determine if they have unwittingly assumed a duty of...more
Employees and their counsel have been very aggressive in attempting to couch employment claims as state-law matters and filing claims in state court instead of federal court to try to avoid the federal judiciary. For various...more