On April 20, 2022, the United States District Court for the District of Maine entered a Judgment in favor of Erin Papkee and against her former employer MECAP d/b/a Milk Street Capital, a real estate investment company in Portland, Maine, and Scott Lalumiere, the primary shareholder and manager of MECAP.…
On January 21, 2022, the Maine Business and Consumer Court entered a Judgment in favor of Anthony Nadeau and against his former employer T.R. Sign Design, Inc. a sign fabrication and installation company in Portland, Maine. The Court concluded that T.R. Sign Design violated the plaintiff’s rights under the Maine…
It is not uncommon for an employee experiencing whistleblower retaliation or discrimination to audio record the employer’s managers, supervisors, and co-workers for later use in a lawsuit against the employer. Employers will naturally request those recordings during the discovery process. Fortunately, Maine courts have long recognized that an employee may…
Maine’s new marijuana law, which recently went into effect and permits some recreational marijuana use, contains a provision that prohibits employers from discriminating against workers who are 21 years old or older because they use marijuana outside of work. At the same time, the law specifically permits employers to prohibit…
This week, the Maine Employee Rights Group scored a victory for its client in a whistleblower case that we filed against Woodlands Senior Living of Brewer. The Penobscot County Superior Court held that a jury could reasonably find that Woodlands retaliated against our client, who worked for Woodlands as a…
Yesterday, a federal court in Massachusetts held that a jury could reasonably find that the Framingham School Committee retaliated against a social worker because that social worker spoke out about sexual assaults that occurred at Framingham High School (“FHS”). According to the court, a jury could reasonably determine that the…
A new poll conducted by National Public Radio, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health shows that many people believe that work is bad for their health. Here are some of the key findings about working adults in the U.S.: 43% say that their…
Last month a federal jury in New Hampshire found that Wal-Mart discriminated against a pharmacist because of her sex and because she blew the whistle on unsafe conditions at the store. The pharmacist, Maureen McPadden, worked at the Seabrook Wal-Mart store for 13 years before Wal-Mart fired her in 2012. …
This week in Harrison v. Granite Bay Care, Inc., the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals corrected a dangerous court-created rule that it had previously established in another whistleblower case. The First Circuit created this rule–the so-called “job duties exception” to whistleblower protection–in Winslow v. Aroostook County, a case, like…
This week the Connecticut Supreme Court issued a decision in Trusz v. UBS Realty Investors which expanded employees’ free speech rights. Mr. Trusz worked for UBS as a managing director and the head of its valuation unit. In this role, Mr. Trusz managed UBS’s process for deciding the value of…