In October last year we reported on a federal jury verdict that the Maine Employee Rights Group had obtained for our client Valerie Peasley. The jury found that Regis Corporation, which owns and operates the hair salon in Bangor where Ms. Peasley worked, unlawfully fired Ms. Peasley because she blew…
Yesterday in Bangor, a jury held that Regis Corporation violated Maine’s Whistleblower Protection Act when it retaliated against former employee Valerie Peasley. Regis operates hair salons nationwide and Ms. Peasley worked at one of Regis’s salons in Bangor. Attorneys Peter Thompson and Chad Hansen, of the Maine Employee Rights Group,…
Yesterday, the U.S. District Court of Maine held that Granite Bay Care, Inc., could legally retaliate against an employee who made a mandated report to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) that the company abused and/or neglected some of its clients. Granite Bay, based in Portland, provides…
The astonishing answer to this question is, sometimes, yes; an employer can sometimes get away with firing an employee for reporting unlawful activity if that employee’s job duties required him to report the unlawful activity. In Winslow v. Aroostook County, the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted one section…
Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) has proposed legislation, supported by a group of trucking and business organizations, that would freeze some new federal regulations designed to address the problem of truckers driving without enough sleep. Collins believes that these regulations need to be frozen and studied more because she thinks they…
In Winslow v. Aroostook County and Northern Maine Development Commission, Inc. (NMDC), the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of the plaintiff’s whistleblower case because it found that she was not a “whistleblower” under the terms of Maine’s Whistleblower Protection Act (MWPA). The First Circuit found that…
Last week, a U.S. District Court in Massachusetts rejected New England Investment and Retirement Group’s (NEINV) argument that it could lawfully fire an employee who reported to NEINV’s compliance officer that NEINV was violating securities laws. Specifically, the whistleblower, a financial planner who worked in NEINV’s North Andover, Mass. office,…
One aspect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) (aka “Obamacare”) that has been in the news recently is the provision of the law that requires employers with 50 or more full-time employees (defined as employees who work 30 or more hours per week or 130 hours per…
Earlier this year, the Maine Department of Labor issued a report on the number of workplace deaths in Maine in 2011, the most recent year of available data. The report showed that more people died in the workplace during 2011 than during any year since 2003. In 2011, workers died…
An investigator with the Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC) has reportedly found that the town of Old Orchard Beach retaliated against an office manager, Kelly Roy, because she blew the whistle on allegedly unlawful financial activity. After she blew the whistle, Old Orchard Beach reduced her hours, took away her…