Last week, I talked about how smart arbitration drafting allowed the company to recover its attorneys fees in successfully defending a claim by a former CEO. But there’s another lesson from Golden v. WorldQuant that company should know: how four simple words in a termination letter can save employers from a legal trap.
Sure, I know you probably want to read about the NLRB’s decision this week questioning the legality of confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses in severance agreements for employees who aren’t supervisors. We’ll have more on that soon. (For now, Jon Hyman’s summary is a worthy substitute.)
But in the meantime, I wanted to highlight something
Over the last several months, I’ve been asked to do far more sexual harassment prevention trainings than typical and the issue of profanity in the workplace has popped up.
No doubt that much of this is due to the recent spate of cases of very public sexual harassment and assault cases (Thank You Matt
In yesterday’s post, my colleague Chris Engler discussed the “wilful” misconduct standard and how it applies when your employee is otherwise eligible to receive unemployment compensation.
Today, Chris returns and has a quick quiz to review some recent cases of how this standard has been applied.
So, you think you know what the “wilful” misconduct
My colleague, Chris Engler, is back today with post getting into the ins and outs of the willful misconduct standard at the Connecticut Department of Labor. Last week, we had a senior CTDOL official speak to our Labor & Employment seminar about this and other pressing topics of interest to employers.
The bottom line:
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?
It’s so rare nowadays that the Connecticut Supreme Court rules on discrimination cases that, when I first took a look at its new decision in Duart v. Department of Corrections (download here) — officially released next week — I got excited. After all, the case is based on a claims of gender, race and sexual
The sad reality is that, on rare occasion, some employees will revert back to their middle school days and behave like a couple of children. Some will e
ven resort to physical fighting. In such a case, employers are faced with a difficult question — can I punish one employee more than other if I think they "started"
As cases go, Smith v. Connecticut (D. Conn., Jan. 9, 2008) (Bryant, J.) will not rank up there in the annals of legal history. .jpg)
(Even the name of the case sounds generic.) Moreover, when you read the facts, the case doesn’t scream "precedent". The Smith case, however, reinforces the notion that consistently applied disciplinary policies are