The Inbox, Pre-Super Bowl Edition

Here at Suits by Suits Polar Vortex Centre, the debate rages even as the hours tick down to kickoff: who should we root for in Sunday’s big game, the Denver Broncos or the Seattle Seahawks?  Both teams’ home bases, from our point of view, have much to commend them in terms of the executive employment issues we love so much.  Seattle is home to Robinson Cano’s almost-quarter-billion-dollar deal with the Seattle Mariners – maybe not C-suite, but a great employment arrangement in and of itself.  Colorado, on the other hand, has given us some toothy stories over the years: from kidnapping to wrongful termination related to speech and a neat case on national origin discrimination.  

But since our beloved Washington football club was essentially eliminated from contention in about, er, October, none of it has really mattered much to us. 

In any event, before you dig into the chili and chicken wings (or not), here are some of the week’s most interesting happenings that concern executive-employer relationships:

• Speaking of sports, a former employee of an organization that sets up youth baseball leagues is asking a Tennessee court to void his non-compete agreement, arguing that the agreement is “unnecessary” because it “serves no legitimate business purpose or motive. There is absolutely nothing unique, novel, or secret about scheduling baseball games.”  He also contends that he wasn’t asked to sign the agreement until his employer had decided to terminate him. 
• An update on one we’ve been covering since we started in this blogging business: a new trial has been ordered in former “Desperate Housewives” star Nicollette Sheridan’s lawsuit alleging Touchstone Television Productions shouldn’t have fired her for complaining that a producer assaulted her; the court, accepting Sheridan’s argument, reversed an earlier decision that dismissed her case for failing to fully pursue administrative remedies.
• We’ve also written before about allegations of employment discrimination at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City.  This week, the casino settled a case brought by over a dozen former employees who allege they were fired because they reached the ripe old age of…40. 
• Now that this Inbox is turning into the Ghost of Blog Posts Past, let’s continue the theme: we wrote several months ago about the case of Thomas Kimmett, a former deputy attorney general for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, who alleged he was fired in retaliation for reporting what he called waste and abuse in the office.  This week, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court’s ruling dismissing the suit, holding that Kimmett’s First Amendment rights weren’t violated because his complaints about the waste and abuse didn’t fall within the protection of Pickering v. Board of Education, a Supreme Court case that protects public employees who exercise their free speech rights.  

• The Inbox