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Mealey's Employment

April 11, 2024
Ohio Jury Finds Worker’s 8 Conditions Were Aggravated By Injury, Must Be Covered

SIDNEY, Ohio — A mechanical contractor’s employee’s eight disc bulge and spinal stenosis conditions were aggravated by an injury he sustained at work in 2003 and should be covered under workers’ compensation, an Ohio jury ruled in eight verdicts.
April 11, 2024
D.C. Circuit: Evidence Didn’t Support NLRB’s Finding In Union Animus Case

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The evidence presented against an employer accused of reminding a truck driver that he was being surveilled and issuing a written warning rather than a verbal one to another driver for an infraction was not sufficient to support a finding by the National Labor Relations Board that the employer disciplined them due to drivers’ support of unionization, a District of Columbia Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, granting the employer’s petition for review and denying the NLRB’s cross-application.
April 10, 2024
Consent Judgment OK’d After Summary Judgment Ruling In COVID-Testing Leave Case

GREENVILLE, Miss. — A federal judge in Mississippi approved a consent judgment between the acting secretary of Labor and a cleaning company that will provide back pay and compensatory and liquidated damages to two workers terminated while on leave from work awaiting COVID-19 test results.
April 09, 2024
Hospital Seeks En Banc Review After Ruling On Ceasing Union Dues Checkoff

PASADENA, Calif. — A hospital found by the National Labor Relations Board in a supplemental decision to have engaged in an unfair labor practice when it unilaterally ceased union dues checkoff filed a motion seeking en banc review after a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that the NLRB followed the proper decisionmaking process.
April 09, 2024
Prevailing Wage Case Worker: Preemption Ruling Doesn’t Need U.S. High Court Review

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court shouldn’t review a preemption ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) in a Massachusetts Prevailing Wage Act case as the decision was not “final,” there are still unresolved issues in the case making it a poor vehicle, the ruling was correct and no further review is warranted, an employee who sued his former employer for failing to pay him according to the act argues in his respondent brief that had been requested by the high court after the employee initially waived his right to respond.
April 09, 2024
Starbucks Workers, Other Amici Support 2-Part Test For NLRB Injunctive Relief

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Interim injunctive relief by the National Labor Relations Board is “critical” where workers are being fired for supporting unionization and “due to the slow pace of unfair labor practice cases,” and such a tool should not be limited, Starbucks Corp. workers argue in an amicus curiae brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court supporting arguments made by an NLRB regional director in a respondent brief in a dispute over the appropriate standard for reviewing injunctive relief requests.
April 08, 2024
Gig Economy Customer Service Company To Pay $3M To Settle Wage Theft Case

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Arise Virtual Solutions Inc. will pay $3 million to customer service workers and the District of Columbia to end a lawsuit alleging that it misclassified workers as independent contractors rather than employees, the District of Columbia attorney general announced.
April 08, 2024
N.H. Federal Jury Rules For Supermarket Worker In Age Discrimination Suit

CONCORD, N.H. — A federal judge in New Hampshire entered a more than $130,000 judgment for a supermarket worker who alleged that he was denied promotion to a full-time position due to his age; the judgment came four days after a jury found that the promotion denial was a willful violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and the New Hampshire Law Against Discrimination (NHLAD).
April 05, 2024
California Jury Awards Former LAPD K9 Trainer $11.56M In Retaliation Case

LOS ANGELES — A California jury returned a verdict for a former Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) K9 trainer on whistleblower and retaliation claims and partially on his claim of discrimination and awarded him $11.65 million for past and future lost earnings and noneconomic losses; the employee alleged that he was pulled from his training duties due to his race and national origin and in retaliation for reports he made.
April 02, 2024
U.S. High Court Won’t Review Unemployment Denial After Vaccine-Related Firing

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on April 1 denied a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by a worker challenging the denial of unemployment benefits after she was terminated for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
April 02, 2024
7th Circuit Denies Rehearing After Upholding USERRA Ruling For Volvo

CHICAGO — The Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied a petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc filed by a former Volvo Group North America LLC employee after the panel affirmed a trial court’s refusal to alter or amend its judgment following the second trial in the worker’s Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) case, which ended in a verdict for Volvo.
April 02, 2024
HP’s $18M Age Bias Class, Collective Settlement Granted Final Approval

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A federal judge in California granted final approval of an $18 million settlement to be paid by HP Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Co. (together, HP) to end a collective and class complaint accusing the technology company of terminating older workers during workforce reductions and replacing them with younger employees in violation of federal and California law, including California’s unfair competition law (UCL).
April 01, 2024
DOL Issues Final Rule On Rights To Representation During OSHA Inspections

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Labor on March 29 announced a final rule that clarifies that employees’ rights to representation during workplace inspections by an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) compliance officer permit an employee or a nonemployee to serve as the representative.
April 01, 2024
Company Tells High Court Dismissal Permitted When All Claims Must Be Arbitrated

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The dismissal of a case without prejudice rather than a stay is permissible “where both sides agree that all claims must be arbitrated,” the individual owners and managers of Intelliserve and related corporate entities (together, Intelliserve) argue in a respondent brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court.
April 01, 2024
Federal Government Tells U.S. High Court Military Chaplains’ Vaccine Case Is Moot

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals correctly ruled that it lacked jurisdiction over an appeal by military chaplains challenging the denial of their requests for religious accommodation from a requirement that they be vaccinated against COVID-19, the secretary of Defense and other federal government officials argue in a response to a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by the chaplains.
March 27, 2024
7th Circuit Rejects Conduct Argument In $2.3M Withdrawal Liability Row

CHICAGO — Reversing summary judgment in a Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act (MPPAA) case it called “the flip side of” Cent. States, Se. & Sw. Areas Pension Fund v. Gerber Truck Serv., a Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held that “the terms of pension contributions to multi-employer plans cannot be changed orally” or via adoption by conduct.
March 26, 2024
Preliminary Injunction Over Illinois Temp Worker Provision Draws Appeal

CHICAGO — After an Illinois federal judge ruled that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act likely preempts an “equivalent benefits” amendment to the Illinois Day and Temporary Labor Services Act (DTLSA) and then issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of that amendment, the leader of an Illinois regulatory department on March 25 filed notice of interlocutory appeal.
March 26, 2024
U.S. Supreme Court Hears Arguments On Jurisdiction To Hear Late MSPB Appeal

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments March 25 in a suit filed by a former federal employee who claims that the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals erred in treating a 60-day deadline for petitioning for review of decisions by the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) as jurisdictional.
March 25, 2024
Retrial Ordered On Title IX Claim After Philadelphia Doctor Awarded $15M

PHILADELPHIA — Three months after a federal jury returned a $15 million verdict for a Philadelphia doctor, a federal judge in Pennsylvania granted judgment as a matter of law on the doctor’s tortious interference with contractual relations claims and ordered a new trial on the doctor’s Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 claim in a lawsuit in which the doctor alleges that he was forced out of his job after a female colleague initiated sexual intercourse and then later used the encounter to try and extort him.
March 22, 2024
DOJ Announces Ohio Company Will Settle Claims Of Bias Against National Guardsman

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Development Corp., doing business as Akro-Plastics, will pay $15,000 and provide other relief to end a lawsuit in a federal court in Ohio by an Ohio national guardsman accusing the employer of failing to promote the worker based on his military service obligation and constructively discharging him on his return from military service, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced March 21.
March 22, 2024
Conn. Appeals Court: Law Permits Firing For Medical Marijuana Use During Work

HARTFORD, Conn. — The termination of an employee for allegedly using medical marijuana while working doesn’t violate Connecticut’s Palliative Use of Marijuana Act where the employee is aware of the employer’s policy requiring the workplace to be drug free, a state appellate court panel ruled, upholding a trial court’s summary judgment ruling for an employer.
March 22, 2024
6th Circuit Largely Upholds Dismissal Of Vaccine Religious Exemption Claims

CINCINNATI — Putative class claims by 46 hospital workers whose requests for religious exemption from a COVID-19 vaccine mandate were largely properly dismissed by a trial court as 44 of the 46 workers failed to establish standing, a Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, reversing only as to two workers who sufficiently alleged that they resigned after their requests were denied but before the hospital reversed its decision.
March 22, 2024
Pennsylvania Top Court Set To Decide Application Of Occupational Law’s Exclusivity

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Similarly situated plaintiffs moved to appear at oral arguments after briefing wrapped up in a case where the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will decide whether the exclusivity provision in the state’s occupational disease law precludes a man’s tort action even when the four-year statute of limitations precludes him from recovering under the statute.
March 21, 2024
University Worker Asks U.S. High Court To Decide COVID-19 Vaccine Question

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Supreme Court justices should decide whether Jacobson v. Massachusetts requires that a governmental action like a vaccine mandate is “subject to heightened scrutiny” and whether such a mandate by Michigan State University (MSU) failed that test, an MSU worker argues in her petition for a writ of certiorari.
March 21, 2024
6th Circuit Vacates, Remands 2 Pizza Delivery Driver Suits On Calculating Costs

CINCINNATI — A trial court that found that pizza delivery drivers should be reimbursed for their costs using a mileage rate published by the IRS and a trial court that found in a different case that pizza delivery drivers’ employers could reimburse drivers for their costs with a “reasonable approximation” both erred, a Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled, vacating both decisions and remanding for the courts to consider the appropriate regime to use given the difficulty of proof.