In Dent v. Cox Communications Las Vegas, Inc., 502 F.3d 1141 (9th Cir. 2007), Mr. Dent signed a WH-58 which acknowledged receipt of payment of unpaid wages for the period beginning with the workweek ending May 4, 2002 through the workweek ending October 11, 2003. Thereafter Dent claimed unpaid wages for a time period prior to May 4, 2002. The district court dismissed his claim, accepting the employer's argument that the unpaid overtime wage claim had been settled in full. The Ninth Circuit reversed, finding that his claim was released only with regard to the time period specified in the WH-58.
- The identifiable cost of the accommodation, including the costs of loss of productivity and of retaining or hiring employees or transferring employees from one facility to another, in relation to the size and operating cost of the employer.
- The number of individuals who will need the particular accommodation for a sincerely held religious observance or practice.
- For an employer with multiple facilities, the degree to which the geographic separateness or administrative or fiscal relationship of the facilities will make the accommodation more difficult or expensive.
The other statute concerns employment protections for employees on military leave in time of war or emergency.
Insurance Coverages for Federal Employees
There was an interesting article in one of the newspapers in the last few days about insurance coverages provided to federal employees who might be sued, and presumably not otherwise protected by immunity doctrines. Wright & Company, a Virginia-based insurance company, writes coverages. The article indicated that it provides $200,000 for legal fees incurred in an administrative proceeding, an additional $100,000 in fees for criminal investigations, and up to $1,000,000 for damages incurred in civil litigation. See: http://www.wrightandco.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=23.
Corporate Social Responsibility
The January 19, 2008 issue of The Economist has a special report on corporate social responsibility. Reprints of the report are available. See www.economist.com/rights. A list of sources can be found at www.economist.com/specialreports and an audio interview with the author can be found at www.economist.com/audio.
For those who are interested, there is an ABA corporate social responsibility committee. If you should be interested in joining, please let me know and I will forward your name to the committee chair.
Hangman's Nooses
In the past week we have observed first Kelly Tilghman making an utter fool of herself on the Golf Channel when she said that the way to defeat Tiger Woods was to take him out and lynch him. That merited only a two week suspension. Then to add fuel to the fire, Golfweek distributes this past week's issue with a cover image of a noose for an article about Ms. Tilghman's idiocy. That thankfully merited the discharge of Dave Seanor, the editor.
Some of the obvious questions raised by these two incidents, other than being dumbfounded that supposedly intelligent people still just don't get it, would be the following:
- How come it took two days to apologize? You would have thought that within seconds after Ms. Tilghman uttered her stupidity, that she or someone associated with the channel, would have realized that what she said was over the top, and an apology should have issued within moments after she said what she said. Makes you wonder whom, in addition to Ms. Tilghman, at the Golf Channel simply doesn't get it.
- Makes you also wonder what the hiring practices are at the Golf Channel. I would assume that if there were African-Americans on the production team, that one of them would have spoken up immediately and demanded that she apologize on the air. I sure would like to see the Golf Channel's hiring statistics.
- That takes me to Golfweek magazine, the cover page, I am told, was vetted by a committee. So, it isn't just Mr. Seanor who doesn't get it, there are many others at the magazine who are simply clueless or worse than that, closet racists who took pleasure in insulting millions of our citizens. So, one wonders why Mr. Seanor is the only person who was disciplined. Yes, "the buck stops here", and the boss takes the fall, but the others ought not to go scot free.
- Finally, the incident, like the Golf Channel incident, has to raise questions about the hiring practices at Golfweek. Again, I sure would like to see some data.
http://www.eeoc.gov/press/1-2-08.html
Since Fiscal Year 2001, the EEOC has filed more than 30 lawsuits that involve the displaying of hangman’s nooses on the job. It recently settled for $290,000 such a claim against Helmerich & Payne International Drilling in Jackson, Mississippi, for $390,000 against Pemco Aeroplex in Birmingham Alabama, for $600,000 against AK Steel in Butler, Pennsylvania, and for more than $1,000,000 against Commercial Coating Service of Conroe, Texas. Tresa Baldas, EEOC Targets Workplace ‘Noose” Cases, National Law Journal, November 5, 2007. Available at: http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1193735026861. See Stephanie Armour, “Racial Bias Suits Climb in Workplaces,” Asbury Park Press, Oct. 29, 2007, available at http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071029/BUSINESS/710290307/1003.
For additional coverage of the Golf week debacle see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/19/AR2008011902439.html?sub=AR
For some startling discussion of the use of nooses as a form of racial discrimination in the workplace see:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/01/nooses/index.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110702700.html
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_31/b3743084.htm?chan=search
Sunrise Senior Living Sued by Former CFO
The former CFO of Sunrise Senior Living filed suit back in September in Fairfax County Circuit Court in Virginia, claiming that he was fired in retaliation for uncovering improper accounting practices. Sounds like a snooze, but, trust me it has gotten real interesting. In recent court filings, Sunrise disclosed that it had discovered "more than 25,000 unique pornographic images" on a company-owned computer used by the former CFO. That disclosure raises interesting issues regarding the former CFO's attempt to delete material from laptops provided to him by Sunrise. Sunrise alleges that the former CFO returned one of two laptops after deleting all active electronic files, and that only after a forensic examination did it find the evidence of pornography on parts of the hard drive that had not been wiped clean. The former CFO's attorney has asked the court to strike all references to the pornography, arguing that Sunrise's instructions regarding retention of materials related to accounting activities under investigation and did not require the retention of the "adult materials". We hope to obtain more information about this interesting case and report further in the future.
Baseball
General Sherman supposedly once said: "If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent Texas and live in Hell." Quite obviously, Roger Clemens is betting that the good citizens of Harris County, Texas will prove the good general wrong. In what, in retrospect, may well be viewed as a serious blunder, Brian McNamee's lawyers threatened to sue Clemens if he went on 60 Minutes. Presumably, that lawsuit would have been filed in a more favorable venue than Harris County, Texas. But Rusty Hardin beat McNamee's lawyers to the punch, and filed a fourteen page complaint for defamation in Harris County before McNamee could file elsewhere. The complaint can be found at http://i.cnn.net/si/2008_images/2008.01.06_Clemens_Original_Petition.pdf.
I am beginning to get that itch that starts about this time every year - the itch to go south for spring training. Many players that I would love to go observe. Will Elijah Dukes get through spring training before he gets arrested yet again? How will D Train (Dontrelle Willis) do in the American League? And who is this latest deportee from Japan, Yosuke Kukudome, who will play right field for the Cubbies?
Damages
Put this under the category of crass commercialism. I co-chair a two day CLE conference sponsored by ALI-ABA on damage issues in employment cases which will be held February 7-8 at Georgetown Law School in Washington, D.C. If you are interested in registering, just contact ALI-ABA at 1-800-CLE-NEWS.
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