William A. Schreiner, Jr.

It feels like most of Suits by Suits' home city of Washington has gone on vacation this week.  Perhaps, then, it's no coincidence that news about employee travel expenses has filled the Inbox. 

We start this trip with news of a four-star Army general, William "Kip" Ward -- who until recently commanded the Army's operations in Africa -- facing demotion for unauthorized and extravagant travel.  Maybe he should have followed Hannibal's lead and gone by elephant -- or George Washington's example of travel by rowboat. 

At the same time, some Republican lawmakers are questioning Attorney General Eric Holder's use of FBI planes for what they claim is personal and inapproriate travel. 

Also, here's an interesting article in the New York Times, noting that top candidates for some jobs are negotiating for exemptions from company travel policies as part of their employment agreements.  No Motel 6 for these folks. 

• The Inbox

For the second time during this quiet week in late August, pregnancy is in the headlines. 

The first time, of course, involved Rep. Todd Akin, a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Missouri who claimed – and then swiftly retracted – that women who are “legitimately raped” don’t get pregnant.  That’s led pregnancy – and abortion politics – to dominate news coverage. 

But here’s another story with pregnancy at its core: this week, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that a former buyer for fashion house Gucci can move forward with her case alleging that the luxury-goods company fired her after she became pregnant. 

• Discrimination
• Pregnancy Discrimination
• Summary Judgment
• Title VII

I need to start off with a confession: my name is Bill and I’m an insurance lawyer.  (“Welcome, Bill”).  I’m going to be writing about insurance as it applies to employment-related disputes.  Even though you may think insurance is a very dry subject, I promise to make it as interesting as I can – although there will be no dancing green lizards in any of these posts.  And, if you work for (or defend) a company that can face suits by employees, you may find these posts very helpful when it comes to protecting your corporate bottom line from those suits. 

Many of the other folks who write on this blog are able to tell great tales of high-profile fights between executives and their companies.  Those are important stories and they are at the core of what this blog is about.  My perspective on employment disputes is somewhat different: I look at whether a company’s insurance policies can provide the company with a defense against an action brought by an employee (or reimbursement for fees and costs when a company defends itself), and whether those policies will cover a judgment or settlement of the case.  It can be a little esoteric at times, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the meaning of individual words in an insurance policy.

• Insurance
• The Basics

A hullabaloo.  A brouhaha.  Even, perhaps, a ruckus, if you will. 

Those words describe what’s been happening with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) board – the entity that oversees our two main airports in this region, Washington-Dulles and National (formally “Ronald Reagan National,” but National to us Washingtonians who have lived in the area more than ten years).  The airports themselves are running fairly well. 

The problem is with another thing the MWAA board is overseeing – construction of the Silver Line, a $6.8 billion, 29-mile extension of the Washington subway out to the Washington-Dulles airport.  The Silver Line has been a fierce battleground for all of the parties involved – Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia (which partly finance the project through their funding of the subway system), taxpayers along the route of the line (who add more money), and the U.S. Department of Transportation (which contributes the largest share).  Those parties, and others, fight nearly continuously on all sorts of issues – from whether the last station should be in the Dulles terminal or outside of it, through the composition of the labor force building it, and where it should go.  And, of course, their respective shares of the cost of the project. 

• Bill Singer, writing in Forbes, discusses one potential consequence for financial industry employees who arbitrate employment disputes with former employers: future employers can see them as willing to fight these disputes and this negative branding can harm chances of employment.
• Evan J. Shenkman, in a piece posted on Lexology, discusses an interesting New Jersey case involving an alcoholic nurse who also had anxiety problems: when she was terminated for not showing up to work, the employer suggested she was being fired for both alcoholism and lack of attendance – and that, therefore, a jury could have concluded she was wrongfully terminated for her alcoholism (attendance is generally a valid reason for termination, the court held).
• This article doesn’t deal with United States law (our usual focus here on Suits by Suits), but in a ‎tip of our beret to our friends in Britain hosting the Olympics, here’s an article that those with an ‎interest in UK employment law might like: Charlotte Lloyd-Jones discusses a recent case there ‎where employees were fired for “gross misconduct on the basis that they were preparing to ‎compete with their employer,” as a breach of an employment contract. The appellate tribunal ‎held that just because the employees might compete in the future didn’t supply a basis for firing ‎them in the present. It also held that the employees have to drive on the left.‎
• And, from the nightmares of the near future department: should employees post on Facebook ‎while they’re in termination meetings with their employers? And if they do, what should ‎employers do about it? It’s already happened, in a case involving an American Airlines ‎employee. Daniel Schwarz has some interesting commentary on this issue here. Welcome to the ‎future!‎

• Arbitration
• The Inbox

Here’s another post in our occasional series on religious discrimination in the workplace.  Today, we’re looking at a decision by the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that brings together three different concepts: religious organizations as employers, disabled persons as employees, and federal laws that apply to hiring.  As when you mix any three ingredients that are fine on their own, the results can be disastrous.  Throw in legislative history – the record Congress creates when it writes a law, and which some courts look to for guidance on how to interpret that law – and you have one fine mess. 

• Discrimination
• Religious Discrimination‎

For your reading list:  The best advice for employees who don’t want to get caught in a non-compete agreement with a former employer, writes Elizabeth Ditts of Corporate Counsel magazine, is to avoid signing them in the first place.  But that’s usually easier said than  done, and Ditts’ article thoughtfully points out things an employee and her prospective new employer need to think about when the employee has a non-compete with the old employer.  Her key conclusion, and it’s probably easier than litigating out of the contract: the employee and the old employer negotiate a way out of the deal, with the new employer watching carefully. 

We’ve written before about the sexual harassment suit between the Kleiner Perkins venture capital firm and its former partner, Ellen Pao.  Developments at the end of last week point out another reason to follow this case, however (and the great Leonard Cohen is only part of the story). 

• Arbitration
• Wrongful Termination

I don’t know where you are when you’re reading this.  Thanks to the Internet, you could be anywhere from Abu Dhabi to Zagreb. 

But if you’re in the same place I am – Washington, D.C. – you likely know a few things about defense contracting.  First, it’s big business – over $1.5 trillion in military contracts have been let since October of 2006.  Second, as much as Washington is a “company town” that relies for its economic life, in large part, on the federal government itself, this area also relies on the substantial presence of several huge companies that specialize in contracting with the military – including household (Pentagon-hold?) names like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, BAE Systems, Science Applications International Corporation, CACI, and Northrup Grumman. If you know those two things, then you know a third: those contracts are zealously guarded and fought over. 

That’s the context for a dispute between Tifco Industries and its former sales manager, Mike Carrillo.  According to Tifco, Carrillo – once he went to work for a competitor – started badmouthing Tifco to military contracting officers, telling them Tifco was under investigation.  Much of Tifco’s work is from the military, so it couldn’t take Carrillo’s statements lying down. 

Say what you want to about Warren Buffett, but he made his money by not spending it extravagantly.  The multi-billionaire owner of Berkshire Hathaway, who could live in a palace if he chose to, still lives in a rather modest ranch house in Omaha, Nebraska. 

And while he is “famous for not micro-managing” the businesses he’s invested in, he does have a limit: he recently fired the head of Benjamin Moore, one of his companies, for taking the entire corporate leadership of the paint company on a yacht cruise to Bermuda on the company’s (really, Warren Buffett’s) dime.