Recently in Employment Law Category

Intracompany complaints about violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) can form the basis of retaliation lawsuit, according to a recent Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion.

Plaintiff Kathy Minor and several other members of her department met with Bostwick Laboratories' chief operating officer, Bill Miller, in 2008 to call to Miller's attention the fact that Minor believed her supervisor had willfully violated the FLSA. Minor claimed the supervisor routinely altered employees' time sheets to reflect that they had not worked overtime when they had. At the conclusion of the meeting, Miller told the group that he would look into the allegations.

Within a week, Minor was fired.

Great Steaks beat a court rap for treating its female employees like meat in 2009, but lost an argument for attorneys' fees this week in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accused Great Steaks of subjecting female employees to a sexually hostile work environment in 2005. The EEOC claim went to trial, and a jury ruled in favor of Great Steaks four years later. Great Steaks, in turn, moved for attorneys' fees under several federal statutes, including a Title VII's fee-shifting provision and the Equal Access to Justice Act's (EAJA) mandatory fee provision.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that an employee was not entitled to recover the value of unvested stock shares under Maryland Wage Payment and Collection Law (MWPCL) because New Jersey law applied to her employment contract in a conflict of laws scenario.

Hillary Kunda sued her former employer, C.R. Bard, Inc. (Bard), alleging that Bard violated Maryland law when it failed to pay her for unvested shares earned through the company's long-term profit sharing plan after she left the company. Kunda claimed that, despite a New Jersey choice-of-law provision in the plan agreement, Maryland law applied to the contract because the MWPCL constitutes a fundamental public policy in Maryland.

Today we're discussing a recent Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals breach of fiduciary duty appeal that's a valuable lesson in contradictory clichés.

On the plaintiff's side, we have Plasterers' Local Union Number 96 (Plasterers), a trade union that subscribes to the "don't put all your eggs in one basket" school of thought.

On the defendant's side, we have former trustees of the Plasterers' pension plan, who believe that one is "better safe than sorry."

A Supreme Court ruling outweighs an unpublished opinion from an administrative law judge (ALJ).

Yes, that seems obvious, but we raise the point only because the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion this week in which it reversed a U.S. Department of Labor Benefits Review Board (BRB) decision that relied on an ALJ decision instead of binding Supreme Court precedent.

Robert Green appeared before an ALJ in 2008 to request disability benefits for hearing loss incurred through loud noise exposure at Ceres Marine Terminals (Ceres). Green was a dockworker, and stated that when the port crane unloaded containers from a cargo ship, it frequently slammed the containers onto the waiting truck chassis below, sometimes as often as 300-400 times in an eight-hour shift. Green claimed that he never wore hearing protection on the dock, but he would put cotton in his ears if the noise was particularly loud.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals denied a group of West Virginia Retirees’ (Retirees) request seeking the continuation of certain health benefits last week.

Since that’s the harshest sentence we’ve written all week, let’s review whether the court’s decision is heartless or justified.

Century Aluminum of West Virginia ran into financial trouble in 2007; it attributed the strain, in part, to rising healthcare costs. In 2009, Century curtailed operations at its Ravenwood, W. Va. plant, and announced a plan to modify or terminate retiree healthcare benefits for retirees who were 65 or older, or who retired between February 6, 1985 and June 1, 2006.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes minimum wage and maximum work hours to regulate employer-employee relationships and minimize detrimental work conditions.

The FLSA, however, has one major limitation: a person who files an FLSA retaliation claim against an employer must currently work for the employer or have worked for the employer in the past. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that a prospective employee whose employment offer was withdrawn does not have a retaliation claim under the FLSA.

U.S. Marshals must perform a number of interesting and sometimes dangerous activities. In performing these activities, their physical health might come into issue. In such cases, however it’s not unheard of that employment disputes can arise, particularly in the case of employment discrimination lawsuits and disability discrimination lawsuits.

In an unpublished opinion, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the summary judgment granted by the district court on a case involving a U.S. Marshal and disability discrimination lawsuit.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeal ruled on a wage and hour lawsuit earlier this week, involving a group of workers in Maryland. The case hinged on issues of pay and whether employees should be compensated for the time it took them to get in and out of their required safety apparel — or as the court called it “donning and doffing” their protective gear.

Quick facts: The case involves workers at a Delaware poultry processing plant. The workers are obligated to wear protective clothing, as provided by the company. This clothing also needs to be sanitized at various periods throughout the day, in order to be in compliance with U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sanitary regulations as well as with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) safety regulations.