As the regulatory and business environments in which our clients operate grow increasingly complex, we identify and offer perspectives on significant legal developments affecting businesses, organizations, and individuals. Each post aims to address timely issues and trends by evaluating impactful decisions, sharing observations of key enforcement changes, or distilling best practices drawn from experience. InsightZS also features personal interest pieces about the impact of our legal work in our communities and about associate life at Zuckerman Spaeder.
Information provided on InsightZS should not be considered legal advice and expressed views are those of the authors alone. Readers should seek specific legal guidance before acting in any particular circumstance.
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Conditioning Severance Payments on Releasing the Company – Another Lesson from Family Dollar Stores’ Recent Firing of Its COO
You may have been left with the impression from our post on Tuesday that Family Dollar Stores is getting a raw deal because the company has to pay former COO Mike Bloom $4.8 million after letting him go for what it saw as poor performance. As we explained, this may be counterintuitive, but it’s consistent with the severance provisions of Bloom’s employment agreement. Besides complying with its contractual obligations, however, the company is getting something in return for the severance: a release from Bloom.
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Supreme Court Will Decide Whether Internal Whistleblowers Can Bring Dodd-Frank Retaliation Claims
The Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010, includes a new cause of action for whistleblowers who claim that their employer retaliated against them for reporting wrongdoing. But it’s not yet certain whether a whistleblower who blew the whistle internally, but not to the Securities & Exchange Commission, can bring a Dodd-Frank claim. As we covered in this post, federal judges have issued conflicting decisions on this issue.
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Cardiac Arrest: A CEO’s Story of Criminal Jeopardy
When an executive becomes embroiled in a dispute with an employer, the executive tends to take it personally. And when the executive’s conflict is with the government, the executive’s sense of outrage ratchets up even more.
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How Do You Prove Damages When Executives Breach A Non-Solicit Provision?
In 2011, a group of executives left Horizon Health Corporation for a competitor, Acadia, but they didn’t leave everything behind. Horizon’s president took a “massive, massive amount” of Horizon documents with him on an external hard drive. And despite provisions in their contracts prohibiting them from soliciting Horizon’s employees, the executives recruited a key member of Horizon’s sales team, John Piechocki, who copied lists of sales leads and added them to his new company’s “master contact list.”
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What Makes a Work Environment “Hostile”?
Federal employment law protects against a number of different types of discrimination, including treating employees differently because of age, gender, or race.
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California Court Refuses to Shelve Barnes & Noble Manager’s Termination Claim
An employee without an employment contract is typically deemed to be an at-will employee. In an at-will employment relationship, the employer has the right to terminate the employee for any reason permitted by law, with or without cause.
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Can Employers Discriminate Against Employees Based on Sexual Orientation? No, According to this Key Court
Federal law—specifically, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—prohibits employers from discriminating against employees based on a number of protected characteristics, including sex, race, national origin, and religion.
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Ex-General Counsel Dodged Privilege Claims Before $14.5 Million Verdict (pt 2)
In our last post, we detailed how Sanford Wadler, the former general counsel of Bio-Rad Laboratories, won a $14.5 million verdict against Bio-Rad.
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How Did This Ex-General Counsel Win $14.5 Million From His Former Employer? (pt 1)
Companies entrust their in-house attorneys with sensitive and confidential information in order to obtain legal advice on important matters. Thus, when an in-house attorney turns on his or her employer, the repercussions can be significant.
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Beware the Deadlock: Delaware Courts Step in on Corporate Dysfunction
The board of directors controls a corporation, but individual directors don’t always agree on the future direction of the company. Sometimes, boards can split into factions. A company’s CEO may align himself with one side and oppose the other.
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Insider Trading and Related Risks for Executive Branch Employees: Pay Attention to the STOCK Act
As a new administration arrives in the nation’s capital amid heightened scrutiny over conflicts between government service and personal business interests, a little-used law—the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (the “STOCK Act”)—is deservedly getting renewed attention.
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From New York and Delaware Courts, a Double Blow of Bad News for Sergey Aleynikov
Sergey Aleynikov, a former computer programmer at Goldman, Sachs & Co., has been on a legal roller coaster for the past few years. In the span of few days, that roller coaster plummeted steeply—twice.
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Headed for Overtime? Trump Administration Will Decide Fate of New Time-and-a-Half Rule
If you’re an employee and you work more than 40 hours a week, you typically have the right to receive time-and-a-half overtime pay for those extra hours.
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A Closer Look at the New Lawsuit By Baylor Football Coach Art Briles
It’s been a tough few months for Baylor football and its former coach Art Briles. Baylor fired Briles in May of this year, after an outside law firm investigated the school’s response to alleged sexual assaults by football players and other students.
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Can an Employer Back out of a Promise to Provide Advancement by Claiming That the Employee Committed Fraud?
Numerous decisions from the Delaware courts establish that a company cannot abandon its promise to advance legal fees and expenses when the covered director, officer, or employee properly invokes it.
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“Change of Control” Case Isn’t Governed By ERISA, Court Rules
When an employee brings a lawsuit involving a plan adopted by their employer, one question is whether ERISA—the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974—applies.
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Court Nullifies CFO’s Employment Because of Prior Extortion Conviction
In lawsuits over contracts, parties sometimes assert defenses that contracts are voidable or void. A voidable contract is one as to which the party should have a choice as to whether it is enforceable or not; for example, when a 17-year-old (a legal minor) buys a car, he may have the option to choose whether to abide by the deal. By contrast, a void contract is one that is illegal because it violates the law or public policy. No one—neither hit man nor jilted spouse—can enforce a contract to commit murder.
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The Yates Memo’s Illusory “Extraordinary Circumstances” Exception
Many of us in the white collar defense bar have written and spoken about the changes wrought by the Yates Memo, but one issue not receiving much attention is the “extraordinary circumstances” exception to the Yates Memo’s application. What is this “extraordinary circumstances” exception?
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Kiss Your Retaliation Suit Hello: Company Faces Trial after Changing Explanation for Firing
When an employee brings a lawsuit alleging that his employer retaliated or discriminated against him, courts typically assess the claim by using a burden-shifting approach. After the employer offers a “legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason” for its actions, the employee has to come forward with evidence showing that the reason was pretextual.
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Federal Whistleblower Statutes Aren’t a Cure-All
When Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank Acts, it included protections for employees who blow the whistle on wrongdoing by their employers. However, those whistleblower protections don’t apply to every report of wrongdoing. Rather, they come into play only when an employee reports particular types of misconduct.