Weekly Brief: Patent Jury Awards, Law Firm Hiring, Scalia's Hat
On April 18, 2024, a jury in Seattle, Washington, determined that a not-for-profit hospital system employer would be required to pay nearly $100 million for time clock rounding and meal period violations, raising concerns for...more
An advisory jury’s substantial front pay award to a plaintiff in a retaliation case was drastically reduced by the judge....more
Last week following a trial in a Kentucky state court, a jury awarded a terminated employee $450,000 based upon his termination following an unwanted office birthday party. The plaintiff alleged that he suffers from anxiety...more
Reynaud v. Technicolor Creative Servs. USA, Inc., 46 Cal. App. 5th 1007 (2020) - Plaintiffs Michael and Fiona Reynaud (both British citizens) sued Michael’s former employer, Technicolor, for negligence based upon its...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
Jury Finds Retail Giant Suspended and Failed to Accommodate Longtime Deaf Employee With Visual Impairment - MADISON, Wis. - Late yesterday, a jury determined that Walmart violated federal law when it refused to...more
In a decision unsurprising to anyone familiar with what California juries have been up to lately, fast-food titan Jack in the Box was ordered to pay $15.4 million (including a staggering $10 million in punitive damages) last...more
For the second time this calendar year, a Los Angeles jury ordered an employer to pay $11 million to an employee who claimed to have been sexually harassed. And, once again, the amount of punitive damages ($8 million) dwarfed...more
Just another day in paradise in Los Angeles… Unless you happen to be an employer. Continuing the recent spate of multi-million dollar verdicts, an LA jury awarded a former police officer $7 million on her sex discrimination...more
Companies often use written Employment Agreements to set out the duties/responsibilities of, and the compensation/benefits to, some or all of their employees. The most obvious reasons for doing so are to ensure clarity and...more
A Los Angeles jury awarded more than $11 million to two former employees who claimed they were sexually harassed and retaliated against for complaining about the harassment. Megan Meadowcroft and Amber Brown, who worked at...more
A federal appeals court recently upheld a half-million dollar verdict against a small Chicago retailer after it concluded that a male employee was the victim of sex discrimination. Although the employer admitted much of the...more
Employer Must Obtain Written Authorization To Conduct Background Check - Connor v. First Student, Inc., 2018 WL 3966434 (Cal. S. Ct. 2018) - Eileen Connor worked as a school bus driver for Laidlaw Education Services, a...more
In a previous piece, I wrote about a diabetic worker in East Tennessee who won a jury award in an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) case against Dollar General. The worker was fired for violating Dollar General’s grazing...more
In a recent opinion that will increase the damage calculation in central New Jersey employment practice liability matters, Judge Stanley Chesler of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey concluded...more
A San Diego jury awarded that amount to a former employee who claimed he was wrongfully terminated based on his arrest record and then defamed. Michael Tilkey worked for Allstate Insurance for 30 years and was fired from...more
In Franchina v. City of Providence, 2018 WL 550511, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 1919 (1st Cir., Jan. 25, 2018), the First Circuit offered no sympathy to the City in its appeal of a jury award that found the City’s fire department...more
Wednesday night the Los Angeles jury hearing the age and disability discrimination case of former sports columnist T.J. Simers came back with a verdict in his favor of $7.1 million, consisting of retro and future lost income,...more
Just when is an employer required to hire those taking prescription pain medications? In Clipse v. Commercial Driver Services, Inc., the Washington Court of Appeals held that Commercial Driver Services, Inc. was liable under...more
In a case dubbed “the mystery of the devious defecator” by a Georgia federal district judge, an Atlanta jury recently awarded a $2.2 million verdict against a company that requested DNA samples from two workers in an attempt...more
Healthcare institutions have a moral and legal obligation to promote patient safety as an essential component of patient care. Supervisors and managers must be supportive of their staffs while remaining vigilant about the...more
In a previous post we discussed the Northern District of Georgia’s decision in Lowe v. Atlas Logistics Group Retail Services, LLC, (N.D.Ga. May 5, 2015), holding that an employer violated the Genetic Information...more
A few weeks ago, we told you about a jury awarding over eight million dollars to the families of two factory workers who were killed by a co-worker in 2010. As it turns out, that award was just the beginning. Last week, a...more
Recently, a Philadelphia jury awarded over $8 million dollars to the families of two factory workers killed by a co-worker in 2010. Concerns about the employee had been reported in the past, and she was suspended the day she...more
You may already have read the scintillating facts surrounding a jury award of $1.44 million (recently challenged unsuccessfully on appeal) against Walgreen Co. (Walgreens) following its pharmacist’s alleged inappropriate...more