Last year, I talked about a First Amendment retaliation case and noted the difficulties in defending against such claims. A new case out of the federal court in Connecticut last week highlights the those difficulties even further.
In Brown v. Waterbury Board of Ed. (download here), the Plaintiff, a custodian for the Waterbury
An employee who is passed over for promotion — time and again — may feel like the whole world is against them. 
Even so, the fact that supervisors and coworkers may "dislike" a particular employee is not enough to prove that the employer retaliated against the employee for participation in a discrimination claim.
So
With a possible snowstorm coming this weekend (or not) and another next week, no doubt there will be the usual rushing out to get milk and bread. But before you do so, here’s a bevy of stories from the last week to keep you updated on the latest in employment law affecting employers in
This year, the U.S. Department of Labor has taken great strides to modernize the office and better serve the public. The new website is only part of that.
This week, the DOL has begun a series of webchats with the public discuss the 2010 regulatory agenda and other issues facing the Department of Labor. They
Going to a trial with an employment discrimination case is expensive. Which is one reason why many employers will ask the court to dismiss a claim before trial using a process known as "summary judgment".
But a recent federal court case illustrates the difficulty that employers still
have in getting courts to grant summary
UPDATED 2/10/09
Sometimes, by coincidence, two unrelated decision get released in close proximity to one another that they bring some greater clarity to the law.
Yesterday, I discussed a Connecticut Superior Court ca
se that found that certain discussions did not create an employment contract and that the employee was properly classified as "at-will".
Earlier
In employment litigation in federal court (let’s leave state court out of this discussion — it’s a whole different animal), filing a motion for summary judg
ment is seen by employers as their last, best chance to win a case before the matter is sent to a jury. After all, if the court grants the motion, a jury never sees the case and the case effectively ends (subject to an appeal).
Over the years, there have been various decisions that have suggested that summary judgments should be more of the exception rather than the rule. Nevertheless, summary judgment still remains a tool that employers have in their toolbox to defend against discrimination claims.
But besides the rules and the decisions that guide how courts should rule on such motions, who judges the matter also plays a role in the ultimate outcome. As discussed below, this is important for employers and in-house counsel to understand when litigating discrimination claims.
Two recent decisions by two Connecticut federal judges illustrate that point. In one case, Judge Vanessa Bryant granted an employer’s motion for summary judgment in a fairly short decision involving a Title VII claim . In another, Judge Christopher Droney denied an employer’s motion for summary judgment on the Title VII claims. Continue Reading A Tale of Two Summary Judgments: Looking at How Federal Judges May View Cases With a Different Lens
It has been several months since my last update on the matters involving former state Ethics Chief Alan Plofsky and the strange case of the lawyer who penned an an
onymous letter complaining of Mr. Plofsky. (For background on the matters, you can find my prior posts here.)
The developments have been slow to
As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes cases hit the headlines for a day only to disappear into oblivion. But thanks to some followup reporting, there’s one story that we can give an update on.
Readers may recall a post from May of this year about a state attorney, Maureen Duggan, who wrote an anonymous letter about the state’s Ethics Chief
Earlier this year, proponents of a bill to make transgender (or gender identity and expression) a protected category failed in their efforts to get that category covered under the state’s anti-discrimination laws.
A new United States District Court case this week may provide proponents with an example of a case that, in their view, may have come