DOL has consistently argued that travel between workplaces is compensable time, meaning it must be paid for and counts toward the total hours worked to determine whether overtime pay is required. The Supreme Court has agreed.

Mass arbitrations are where a plaintiff’s firm brings thousands of identical claims against a business. It has increasingly been relied upon by plaintiff lawyers in the past few years. New developments are changing the landscape.

As employer use of AI has increased, so has the development of AI regulation at the state and local level

A heterosexual woman was hired as an executive secretary by Ohio Department of Youth Services in 2004, later promoted to program administrator. In 2019, she applied for a management role, was interviewed, but ultimately a lesbian woman was chosen. Days after her interview, she was demoted to secretary, and the agency hired a gay man for the vacant program administrator role.   She sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming discrimination based on her sexua

The Ninth Circuit has backed the National Labor Relations Board's order finding that an apartment complex manager illegally terminated an employee for discussing his wages with colleagues, a protected activity under the NLRA.  It rejected the manager's argument that the employee was fired for poor work quality.   WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT…Employees discussing wages generally qualify as protected activity under the NLRA. Employees have a right to discuss pay. The NLRA covers nearl

Gray-market goods are genuine products imported into the US without the trademark owner's consent, often bypassing authorized channels. Gray-market activity leads to lost sales, brand dilution, and compliance risks.   The Gray-Market Challenge Unlike authorized goods sold legitimately or counterfeit items like knockoff watches, gray-market goods are legitimate but distributed outside planned channels. This matters because legal rights and business risks differ.   The economic

A Michigan District Court found that shared services agreements and the parent companies' involvement could make parents liable for environmental claims against their subsidiaries. The court ruled these agreements, along with actual involvement, support a claim that parents operated the facilities and are responsible for violations.   The court held that, while a parent company is protected from liability for its subsidiary's acts under standard state corporate law, it may st

Arbitration is a creature of contract. Unless the contract clearly states an agreement to arbitrate, courts are unlikely to compel it.

Failure to make payments covered by the Massachusetts wage act automatically entitled the plaintiff to triple damages and reasonable attorney fees in addition to the wages owed. Not all payments made by employers to employees are wages covered by that law.

A former employee sued an officer of her defunct employer for non-payment of wages. The court dismissed the case.

A group of shareholders brought a derivative action on behalf of a corporation they owned against the corporation's officers for breach of fiduciary duty, alleging that the officers failed to sue another company that allegedly stole trade secrets from the corporation. An independent review committee formed by the board had decided that it was not in the corporation's interest to bring that lawsuit. The court dismissed the derivative action. WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT… Shareholders

Under an agreement in which the buyer bought 7.7 acres of land, the seller reserved the right to repurchase 3.8 acres of that land for $350,000. The purchase option said that the dimensions and future lot lines were to be mutually agreed upon at a later date. When the seller sought to enforce the repurchase agreement in court, the court refused to do so.   WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT…The court said that because the contract left its terms for future negotiation, it was too indefini

Of the top one million home pages on the internet, 95 percent have accessibility barriers that interfere with people with disabilities' ability to use them

Preparing for Massachusetts' Pay Transparency Law

You should consider arbitration as a viable option for commercial disputes because, in most cases, the benefits outweigh the downsides.

401(k) plan arbitration clauses requiring disputes to be resolved individually, rather than collectively, may be invalid

The Washington Supreme Court (Court) held that any person who applies to a job posting that does not comply with the pay transparency requirements of the Washington Equal Pay and Opportunities Act(EPOA) may seek damages under the statute, regardless of whether the individual actually intended to seek employment with the employer.    The EPOA requires employers to disclose salary, wage, and benefits information in all job postings. The Court held that any person who applies to

The use of artificial intelligence in white-collar jobs raises concerns about how employees are classified under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

A habitual tendency is the abandonment of defunct or obsolete business entities. This can cause problems.

Washington State Increases Risks for False or Misleading Email Subject Lines