What a mess.
And I’m not just talking about the cleanup from Tropical Storm Isaias. Hasn’t been much fun without power, internet or reliable cell service. (I hope everyone is staying safe and gets power soon — my town’s projection was 5-7 days!)
Heck, it’s been tough to even do a blog post about a
Each day of late feels like a week in terms of the firehose of news pouring out each day.
On Monday came news that Italy was going on lockdown. For a month.
And Connecticut state government rolled out a series of orders that included no travel and limits on meeting sizes to 100
What does it feel like winning the lottery? I don’t know but it has to feel a lot like getting picked for jury duty.
(Wait, am I the only one to get excited at the prospect of jury duty? <grins sheepishly>)
If you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you may remember that I’ve been called to jury duty before. Sometimes, it’s been cancelled but back in 2011, I made it all the way to a courtroom — only to be dismissed when I noted that I knew the attorneys at both lawfirms.
Anyways….I’ve been called to jury duty again next week, which gave me the inspiration for this week’s Employment Law Checklist Project post #emplawchecklist. The law is found in a different section than most — and a reminder that not all the laws that employers have to follow are in one neat package.
In fact, this might be one of more confusing employment laws out there.
The key portions of jury duty are actually found in two separate provisions. If your eyes glaze over at the laws, just skip to the summary down below.
Continue Reading Employment Law Checklist Project: Protecting the Sacredness of Jury Duty
In a few weeks, the Connecticut Supreme Court will begin it’s next session. As I looked at the calendar assignment for the first term, what I began to realize is something that’s been gnawing at me for a while — there’s not an employment law case to be found on the docket.
Then I started
I had a lot of plans this week to do another deep dive into an employment law issue but then, well, let’s just say life happens.
Among the things? Lots of questions from clients about the new overtime rules. While everyone has had months to plan, there are definitely a few procrastinators out there.
But
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk at the Connecticut Legal Conference about employment law issues. My talk focused on free speech rights in the workplace — a topic I’ve covered well in some prior posts here and here, for example.
One of the other topics
My colleague, Jarad Lucan (who just won a New Leader of the Law award from the Connecticut Law Tribune!) returns today with a post about the protections employees who testify in court may have.
Most employers (at least those employers that read this blog on a regular basis) know that it is illegal to
So yesterday, I said that while the topic of implicit bias was important to understand, I indicated that it was far from settled in the legal context.
One recent case demonstrates why.
The plaintiffs in an age discrimination case in Pittsburgh attempted to introduce testimony from Dr. Anthony G. Greenwald, who has developed the
Having this blog for nearly eight years, it’s fair to say that I’ve covered quite a few topics. But every once in a while, a never-before-discussed issue makes it way to the forefront. Today is one of those days.
My colleague, Gary Starr, has a post today about a recent Connecticut Appellate Court decision
A case out of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (of which, Connecticut is part of) addresses an interesting question:
When a jury finds that sexual harassment has been perpetuated by a single employee, is injunctive (non-monetary) relief required to be issued by the District Court?
The EEOC argued yes and argued that remedies such as preventing the harassing employee from returning to the workplace were appropriate.
The Second Circuit agreed in part, saying that ordinarily a termination of a lone harasser should be enough. But the court said that given the egrigious facts of this particular case, something more should’ve been done to protect the female employees from potential future harassment.
The case, EEOC v. KarenKim, Inc. (d/b/a Paul’s Big M Grocery), can be downloaded here.
There’s a lot of facts to the case, but this summary, by the Outten & Golden Employment Law Blog, captures some of the salient points:
KarenKim is a grocery store whose employees largely consist of teenage female employees. The company is owned and managed by Karen Connors. In 2001, she hired Allen Manwaring as the store manager. In 2006, Connors and Manwaring became romantically involved and had a son together.
At trial, a number of current and former employees testified about Manwaring’s sexual harassment of the female employees, which consisted of verbal and physical harassment. Some of his verbal comments included making comments of a sexual nature to employees and compliments about parts of their body. He told one employee that if he was her boyfriend, he would never “let her out of his sheets” and that “if he was 10 years younger, he would be on top of her.” He also physically harassed the women by touching and massaging them in inappropriate ways and on a daily basis. He would brush up against them to deliberately touch their breasts, put his crotch against their buttocks, breath on their necks, hug them, and squeeze their hips.
Oy.
Continue Reading What Remedy Is Appropriate When a Jury Concludes Sexual Harassment Occurred?