Real Life Employment Law
Nearly every day, executives and managers, and the in-house counsel and Human Resources professionals who work with them, are confronted with unanticipated questions regarding the workforce. Just when they think they have "seen it all," along comes a new and often stranger scenario involving an odd twist to an area they thought they fully understood. These individuals often find themselves back at square one when trying to construct an appropriate response and devise a creative solution to the problem presented. Sometimes these "Quirky Questions" can be resolved easily; other times, they implicate practical and legal issues that are not immediately apparent.
This Quirky Employment Questions Blog addresses unanticipated questions regarding the workforce.
We encourage you to submit your thoughts and reactions to the questions presented. We also encourage you to submit questions that you would like to see addressed, subject to these guidelines.
Stephen D. Bell
Michael Droke
Joseph W. Hammell
Sarah Andrews Herman
Ryan E. Mick
William J. Miller
Melissa Raphan
Gregory M. Saylin
Gabrielle Wirth
David C. SingerBLOG CONTACT INFO
E: Wirth.Gabrielle@dorsey.com
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Question: We are a New York employer. We had an outside vendor doing our payroll and we recently discovered several of our employees were overpaid three months in a row. Is there anything we can do other than get the employees’ agreement to make a deduction to recoup the overpayments? I seem to recall that many states, California comes to...
Question: I am a Human Resources representative of an independent for-profit company that publishes multiple travel and vacation magazines. Some of my company’s executives have expressed an interest in hiring interns for next summer and for a possible year-round program, if the program is successful. Currently, we aren’t sure what we would like our interns to do exactly but one...
Question: I run a restaurant chain that operates in different states, and I’m about to open my first location in Minnesota. We generally ask our servers to share a portion of their tips with bussers. We also include mandatory charges for large groups. I’ve heard the rules surrounding tips and service charges are quite unique in Minnesota. Is there anything...
Question: We recently made an offer to an applicant for an important job at our company. The offer was conditioned on a satisfactory background check and her passing our standard drug test. She had no problem with the drug test. But, when we did the background check, we discovered that she had sued her former employer for violations of the...
Sullivan v. Oracle Corporation, et al. June 30, 2011, in Sullivan v. Oracle Corporation, et al., the California Supreme Court decided three certified questions from the Ninth Circuit regarding work performed in the State of California by non-residents for California based employers. Three plaintiffs worked as “Instructors” for Oracle Corporation from 2001 to 2004. As Instructors, Plaintiffs’ job was to...
Kasten v. Saint-Gobain: Supreme Court Rules That Oral Employee Complaints Are Afforded FLSA Retaliation Protection Introduction On March 22, 2011, the United States Supreme Court issued its long-awaited opinion in Kasten v. Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., __U.S.__, No. 09-834 (Mar. 22, 2011), holding that oral complaints are sufficient to support retaliation cases under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”)....
Question: Our company is located in Washington. To limit costs, we turned to use independent contractors in order to avoid paying benefits, limit overhead, and increase flexibility. But when can someone we hired as an “independent contractor” and for whom we expressly retained no “right to control” nonetheless be deemed an employee, exposing the company to unplanned risks under Federal...
Question: This question is not especially “quirky.” I know that last year, you described the important employment cases that the U.S. Supreme Court was going to consider in the following year. I’ve seen a lot of press recently about the Walmart-Dukes case. What other employment cases will the Supreme Court be considering next term?
Quirky Question # 128: I work for a California employer with nonexempt retail employees who earn commissions on their sales. We have been sued for failing to provide our employees with meal and rest breaks. I understand the company may be liable to each employee for one hour of pay when a break was not provided. The class action complaint...
Wage and hour class actions comprise approximately one third of all class action litigation. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has taken note as during the past six months, a number of significant wage and hour cases were decided by the court. Most of these cases involved class allegations where the court considered issues related to employee classification, off-the-clock work...
Erica ChenErica is an associate in the Costa Mesa office of Dorsey & Whitney and a member of the firm’s Labor and Employ...
Jack SullivanJack is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employment group, where he focuses his practice on employment adv...
Ieva AubinAs an employment and business immigration attorney, ...
Michael DrokeMike started his career as a client, not a lawyer...
Matt DurhamMatt defends employers in Utah and throughout the ...
Aaron GoldsteinAaron is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Josh HughesJosh’s experience spans trial and appellate advoc...
Jillian KornblattJillian is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor & Employ...
Laura LestradeLaura began practicing at Dorsey in 1992 and has s...
Ryan MickFor more than a decade, Ryan has counseled corpo...
Nick PappasNick litigates and counsels with respect to com...
Melissa RaphanMelissa is a Partner in Dorsey’s Labor and Employ...
Gabrielle WirthEmployers turn to Gabrielle for guidance on how they...
