William A. Schreiner, Jr.

From The Inbox: Tempers may be flaring around the country given this week's rampant heat wave, because the big news seems to be about heated wrongful termination suits between employers and their employees:

In Tampa – where Zuckerman Spaeder maintains a great office, by the way – the former human resources director of Hillsborough County has sued the county for wrongful termination.  That in itself may not be so unusual – but as the Tampa Bay Times notes, the suit follows the HR director’s complaint with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission that the County’s property appraiser sent her pornographic emails.  Another rule to live by: don’t send the HR director pornographic email. 

From West Virginia, a woman has sued TRG Solutions, alleging that she was wrongfully terminated for being pregnant.  Surely by coincidence, she was fired the day she told her supervisor she was pregnant. 

Meanwhile, in Pasadena, a judge has ruled that a group of employees suing the city for wrongful termination are not entitled to have their jobs back while their case works its way toward trial. 

On this blog, we often see basic practices employers and employees should follow to minimize employment disputes.  For example, employers: don’t talk about religion on job interviews.  Employees: try not to curse too much at work, watch what you say on social media, and read what the company wants you to sign before you leave. 

None of these principles seems outlandish.  Many of these “morals of the story” are, in the abstract, things we all should have learned ago.

Here’s another thing we should all know: unless you’re in the gun business, guns and the workplace generally do not mix.  We’ve learned this from several cases of senseless gun violence in the workplace in recent years.  But even before a bullet is fired, just talk of guns and work can be a bad combination, as a Florida lawsuit brought by a former law professor against his law school demonstrates.

• Wrongful Termination

A rare news recap that has nothing to do with health care reform:

• Live Nation Entertainment has finally found harmony with its former chairman Michael Cohl, settling a dispute over a claim that Cohl owed it money under his severance agreement.  When Cohl left Live Nation in 2008, he agreed to pay $9.85 million over two years to buy parts of the business and get out from under parts of a broad noncompete provision.  Live Nation sued him in 2010, saying he still owed $5.4 million.  Marketwatch.
• An employee who insisted on getting paid under a severance agreement because he was competing with his former employer (apparently the severance agreement did provide for such payments) was socked with $40,000 in fees for his efforts after the trial court granted summary judgment for the employer, which argued that he was not competing with it.  Odd.  JD Supra.
• Daniel Foreman, an investment fund executive, filed suit against Cardinal Growth Corp., claiming that it misrepresented the value of funds when it asked him to help it find companies to invest in.  He seeks $82,000 in unpaid fees, as well as other payments.  AltAssets.
• The former chief executive of Extended Stay hotels was socked with a $100 million judgment in that company’s bankruptcy, based on a series of personal guarantees.  But he’s not taking the judgment lying down.  He’s sued Extended Stay’s bankruptcy lawyers, alleging that their malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty caused the judgment against him.  Thomson Reuters.

• Bankruptcy
• The Inbox

So maybe Clyde Bennett’s story isn’t quite as compelling as “The Fugitive” – the 1960s- era TV show and 1993 movie about a doctor wrongfully accused of killing his wife who has to go on a manhunt for the real killer, all the while being pursued by police. 

But a jury in federal court in Virginia found the wrongful allegation that Bennett had stolen computers from his employer pretty compelling.  Compelling enough to award him $1.7 million in compensatory and $350,000 in punitive damages when Bennett sued his employer for malicious prosecution.  And just last week, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the jury’s decision.  My colleague Andrew Torrez noted the decision last week, primarily because the verdict is unusually high for a case like this.  But it bears some more in-depth review. 

If you’ve had any sort of a working life, then you’ve been asked at least one odd question on a job interview.  My personal favorite is why manhole covers are round. [1]  But the oddest interview question I’ve ever been asked was: “Who was Saint Thomas Aquinas?”  In my panic and surprise, my mind confused its files labeled “English Religious leaders named Thomas from the Middle Ages,” and I described for my interviewer Sir Thomas More.  My interviewer – a leading lawyer at a very prestigious New York firm – sat silently for a moment, and then lectured me on how I apparently didn’t have the liberal arts background necessary to work at his firm. 

Setting aside how happy I am, in retrospect, that I didn’t wind up working for someone who would grill me about medieval history, it is rare that any job interview question involves saints or other facets of religious belief.  Most employers don’t delve into that subject with candidates – either they don’t care to inquire, or they don’t believe religion (or lack of it) has any bearing on the quality of an employee’s work. 

• Discrimination
• Religious Discrimination‎
• 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 to be interesting food for thought when it comes to protecting your corporate bottom line from those suits.  (As always, though, whether an individual dispute is insured or not is a very fact-specific inquiry that depends on the language of the policy and the facts at issue – your mileage may vary, as they say).

• D&O
• Executive Compensation
• Insurance

Now here’s some #@%! thought-provoking career advice for executives and the people that hire them: cursing at work (or “cussin” as my southern in-laws say) can cut both ways for your career, as reported here in the Wall Street Journal. 

Here’s an interesting story from Joann S. Lublin and Christopher Weaver of the Wall Street Journal about the CEO of medical device company Stryker, who was asked to leave that company over an alleged affair with a flight attendant who worked on the company’s private plane.  In the abstract, it’s not unusual for a well-placed executive to leave when an affair with a subordinate is discovered.  The interesting thing is: CEO Stephen MacMillan asked a committee of the company’s board for approval to conduct the affair once his divorce was final.  He (and his paramour) even followed the committee’s request that the flight attendant leave the company first. 

Today we are launching Suits by Suits, a legal blog about disputes between companies and their executives. The four of us are colleagues and lawyers who sometimes wear suits and who sometimes represent clients who sometimes wear suits. We also share an interest in how conflicts between companies and high-ranking employees can play out in the legal arena.

So, for example, when we see a headline about Desperate Housewives star Nicollette Sheridan’s lawsuit against ABC for wrongful termination – which, by the way, recently ended in a mistrial but has been set for a new trial to begin in September – we read the story. Then we dig deeper because, to us, this case is not just about a Hollywood celebrity, it is a suit by suit.

We want to know whether the jury was persuaded by Ms. Sheridan’s theory that her character was killed off and she was written off the show because she complained about being assaulted on the set by the show’s creator Marc Cherry.

We want to know whether the judge accepted Ms. Sheridan’s legal theory that being fired for complaining about an assault violates California public policy that employees have a right to a workplace free of violence and threats of violence.

We want to know whether ABC was able to prove that its plans to kill off Ms. Sheridan’s character were hatched long before Ms. Sheridan complained about Mr. Cherry.

We want to know whether there are any really devastating e-mails – to either side – and whether the jury is going to get to see them, or the judge will find them inadmissible.

We want to know whether any D&O insurance is available to pay Mr. Cherry’s legal fees in the case. Okay, maybe Bill is the only one who wants to know that.

Are we the only ones?

Ellen, Jason, Andrew and Bill

• D&O
• Insurance
• Wrongful Termination