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. …
Last week a federal court in New Hampshire held that a jury could reasonably find that First Data Merchant Services (“First Data”) violated the Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) when it fired Jessica Fountain, a former First Data account executive. Ms. Fountain took FMLA leave in 2009 because of…
Many employers in Maine and around the country jointly employ workers. For example, the relationships between staffing companies and their clients are often designed so that the staffing company and the client jointly employ the workers who perform work for the client. In these situations, there are special rules for…
In a new study, a researcher has found that employers tend to discriminate against female applicants who are lesbian, bisexual, or transgender; applicants who the researcher categorized as “queer.” To conduct the study, the researcher created fictitious resumes that were identical in every respect except some indicated that the applicant…
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…
The Portland Press Herald ran an article this week about the history of labor activism at the Portland Co. during the nineteenth century. The Portland Co. was renowned for building locomotives and there is an ongoing debate over whether to preserve its former site as a historic landmark. The article…
It is a common perception among management-side employment lawyers that employees tend to abuse their rights to leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) around the holidays. Some examples of management-side employment lawyers’ advice to businesses about this can be found here, here, and here. So, if you…
A Massachusetts state court has held that a Catholic school violated the state’s law against sexual orientation discrimination when it fired its food services director because he was a gay man with a same-sex spouse. We previously reported on this case when it was filed. The Catholic school, Fontbonne Academy,…
This week, the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a jury verdict in a long running retaliation case involving the termination of a sky cap who worked at Logan Airport. The sky cap at issue in the case, Joseph Travers, was the named plaintiff in a class action lawsuit…
This week the First Circuit Court of Appeals, whose decisions govern Maine and other New England states, held that a reasonable jury could determine that two Dunkin Donuts store managers should have received overtime pay. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), a federal law, entitles employees to overtime pay equal…