Category Archives: Personal Injury Blog

In 2014, you wouldn’t expect a woman who decides to have a baby to find that her condition has jeopardized her work and promotion potential. However, according to a new study that was released recently, pregnancy-related job discrimination does not just exist in American industry, but is also fairly widespread.

The analysis was based on a review of 75 cases involving women who had filed pregnancy-related discrimination complaints against their employers with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission from 1986 to 2003. The researchers found that 40% of gender-based workplace discrimination complaints involved pregnant women. In 30% of those cases, the employer cited poor performance by the pregnant employee as the reason for the discrimination. In 10% of the findings, the employers stated that the reason for the firing was based on “business needs, profit and efficiency.”

Very often, employers seem to get away with using the “efficiency” and “business performance” ruse, when they want to fire a pregnant worker. The industry has found it very convenient to perpetrate a stereotype that pregnant women are unreliable, do not take their job seriously, and may require additional accommodations in the workplace that are impractical. Some employers believe that pregnant mothers are likely to be distracted not just currently, but also in the future.

Not all pregnant women in the workplace realize that their rights are protected by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act which prohibits employers from terminating an employee just because she’s pregnant. However, the problem is that these days, employers don’t fire women outright because they are pregnant. It is a slow process that usually consists of giving the woman poor performance grades, spotlighting workplace inefficiency, and using other methods to ease her out from the job.

President Barack Obama in his latest State of the Union address announced his plan for an increase in minimum wages for federal contract workers. The plan is already being greeted with great praise by unions and labor activists. However, the plan to increase minimum wages is not as expansive and widespread, as many minimum wage advocates had called for.

During his State of the Union Address, the President announced that he will soon sign an executive order that will establish the minimum wage for federal contract workers at $10.10 an hour. The current federal minimum wage for federal contract workers is $7.25 per hour.

While the plan has been greeted with enthusiasm, it contains several limitations which California employment lawyers find disappointing. The new increases will only go into effect in 2015, at the very earliest. They will also not be effective retroactively, and not affect current federal contracts. Only new contracts that go into effect after 2015 are expected to be affected by the minimum wage increase.

Besides, the increase will only cover approximately 10% of the 2.2 million federal contract workers currently in the country. That’s because many of these federal contract workers already are eligible for more than $10.10 an hour, and that means that the new minimum wage will make no difference to their situation at all.

There have been other restrictions and limitations that are disappointing. For instance, the minimum wage order will have no impact on contract renewals, unless there are modifications in the other terms of the agreement, like the type of work. That means that when a contract is renewed, not everybody will be eligible for the $10.10 minimum wage.

Alabama State University will pay $ 1.1 million to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit that was filed by three former employees of the college. The three former employees claimed in their lawsuit that two administrators at Alabama State University, including a chief executive officer and an executive director subjected them to sexually harassing practices in the workplace.

The men made several inappropriate and sexually charged comments against the women, and promoted a hostile work environment. One of the defendants, who happens to be black, routinely used the N- word. The defendant also used the N- word to refer to the seven-year-old son of one of the plaintiffs. In one case, a defendant asked one of the plaintiffs, to dance for him, and also inappropriately touched her.

The plaintiffs also said that in spite of making several complaints to the Alabama State University human resources department, no action was taken against the two men. Employees were also threatened against participating in an investigation by the Equal Employment Commission against one of the defendants on the basis of the complaints against him.

Now, Alabama State University has agreed to pay $ 1.1 million to settle the sexual harassment lawsuit. Last year, the three plaintiffs also received a $ 1 million jury verdict in their favor. The verdict is likely to raise a lot of questions in that state, especially considering that the Alabama State University is largely funded by public money. The fact that these allegations of sexual harassment were made over a period of time, involved multiple claimants, and that these allegations were ignored by university officials is also likely to be spotlighted.

An exotic dancer in Atlanta has filed a wages lawsuit against her employer, claiming violations of the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act.

In the lawsuit, the stripper Amanda Berry claims that she and another fellow exotic dancer at the same strip club were misclassified by the owners of the strip club as independent contractors. They were not classified as employees, and as a result, they were paid only tips from customers, and were not paid any overtime or even minimum wages.

The two worked at a club called Pin Ups, and according to the lawsuit, club management imposed additional fines as well as other fees on strippers, working at the club. There were widespread violations of their rights. For instance, if the dancers arrived late, they were fined. If they didn’t appear on stage immediately when their names were announced, they were slapped with another fine. Fines were also levied if they were not ready on the dance floor within 30 minutes of arriving at the facility, and they were also fined between $35 and $95 a day, as bar fees, breathalyzer test fees, DJ fees, and “slow day” fees.

Not surprisingly, the club did not even bother to inform workers, or give them prior notice before terminating them. For instance, when a manager at the facility learned that Berry was pregnant, she was immediately fired.

However, the dancers may have a long uphill battle ahead of them, especially as they do not seem to have been salaried employees of the club. The dancers may take comfort from the fact that in 2009, several dancers at another Atlanta adult club settled a similar lawsuit. In that particular case, the judge ruled that the dancers were indeed employees, even though the club did not pay them any wages.

As the senior workforce in the country continues to age, California employment lawyers are likely to come across more cases involving discrimination against senior workers based entirely on their age. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been taking a grim view of such occurrences. The agency recently filed a lawsuit against Texas-based Mattress Firm, alleging age-discrimination against employees.

The employees that are the focus of this lawsuit were employed at a facility in Las Vegas. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit against the company, company officials went about the deliberate process of making things very difficult for the older workers in Las Vegas. This was part of a systemic program to eliminate his older workers from the company, and replace them with younger workers.

Mattress Firm and 15 unspecified defendants have been named in the lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, a number of workers, including salespersons and store managers were all victimized as part of the company’s campaign to phase them out of the firm, and replace them with younger workers.

The discrimination is alleged to have begun after the Mattress Firm acquired the Las Vegas mattress chain back in 2007. Older workers began to feel pressure from the firm, as they received not-so-subtle signs encouraging them to quit. Older workers who did not quit, or did not give in to the pressure, were fired.

According to the lawsuit, the Mattress Firm was very stringent in its discrimination against older workers, calling older workers “set in their ways” and “resistant” to change, and naming these the reasons why these workers were being phased out and replaced with younger workers.

Most of the focus on the dangers to teenage drivers from listening to music in the car has centered on the distractions that arise when a teenager changes CD’s, or changes radio channels to listen to his favorite music. However, the type of music that teens listen to can also increase accident risks significantly.

 According to a new study, teenage drivers who were listening to music that they liked or preferred were much more likely to make driving errors, which increased accident risks significantly.

The research was conducted by a group of Israeli scientists, who evaluated 85 young novice drivers. Each of these motorists was asked to take six trips, each of which lasted for about 40 minutes. In two of these trips, the teenagers listened to music of their own preference, while on two of the trips, they listened to music that was specially designed to increase driver safety, like light jazz. On the last two trips, they did not listen to any music at all.

The researchers focused on finding out the effect of the music on the person’s driving abilities, by measuring driving deficiencies, like aggressiveness, speeding and other factors.

They found that almost all the teenage drivers were likely to make critical driving errors, and display driving deficiencies while driving listening to their favorite music. 98% of the teenage drivers made an average of three deficient driving behaviors, like aggression, inaccuracy, and miscalculation while driving.

Approximately 32% of the teenage drivers who were listening to their favorite music required a sudden warning or emergency command in order to avoid an accident, while 20% require an assisted braking maneuver by the researcher in the car to prevent an accident.

The United States Supreme Court recently raised the bar for employees to prove workplace discrimination.

In two separate rulings, the nation’s highest court recently raised the bar for employees to prove that they were targets of discrimination in their workplace. In the first ruling, the Code narrowed down the definition of what constitutes a supervisor in a racial harassment lawsuit. In the other ruling, the court implemented a much stronger and tougher standard for workers to prove that they had faced wrongful or illegal retaliation for complaining about discrimination in the workplace.

The first ruling came in Vance Versus Ball State University, and the lawsuit involved an African-American worker, who accused a supervisor of racial harassment in the workplace. However, the Supreme Court ruled that the person that she accused was not a supervisor, and did not meet the definition of a supervisor. Therefore, the plaintiff had a much higher burden of proof to find the employer liable.

The woman in this lawsuit had claimed that the other worker, who is white, had been very hostile towards her, blocked her in an elevator, and slammed pots and pans towards her. However, the woman was not a supervisor, and both sides did agree that the woman did not have the authority to hire or fire employees.

In the second lawsuit, the court ruled in University Of Texas South-Western Medical Centre Versus Nassar, and tightened the legal criterion for plaintiffs to prove that they faced retaliatory actions in the workplace because they complained about discrimination. In this ruling, the Supreme Court held that the plaintiff must prove that the retaliation was not only a motivating factor, but the main determinative factor in an allegedly retaliatory action like a demotion.

Wall Street has traditionally been a discriminatory environment to work in for many people. In the past, the country’s financial industry has always had a reputation for discriminating against people of minority races as well as women. Now however, it is older employees who are beginning to feel the heat of the industry’s discriminatory practices.

Several financial analysts claim that age discrimination is widespread on Wall Street, and those discriminatory practices have increased with the tighter financial regulations that were put in place after the meltdown of 2008.

The increased regulatory oversight has led to tightened moneymaking ability at many Wall Street companies. When there are tighter regulations, there are few opportunities for you to make greater profits. In order to make more money, companies have looked at reducing their overheads, especially the kind of salaries that they pay their professionals. One group that is increasingly being targeted when it comes time to handing out pink slips is the 45 to 55 year age group.

There is a specific reason why professionals of this age are being targeted for bias in the financial industry. Employees in this age group are already well-established and enjoy a very nice annual salary, perks and benefits. That means more expenses, and for the company, it often makes more financial sense to limit the number of these employees. An entire generation of employees in this age group is simply being phased out of the industry, as a growing number of lawsuits show.

What is really worrisome to California age discrimination lawyers however, is the fact that age discrimination now does not involve persons in their late 50s or early 60s. Discrimination based on age now begins when a person enters his mid-40s.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck is fighting a $100 million gender discrimination lawsuit that claims that the company regularly and systemically discriminates against female employees, especially pregnant women and women with young children.

The lawsuit has been filed by Kelli Smith, who claims that she was regularly overlooked when it came to promotions. In fact, according to her lawsuit, she was actually demoted for taking maternity leave in 2010. After she returned from her maternity leave, she faced a number of other discriminatory actions by the company, including unfair performance evaluations, as well as other measures that severely restricted her chances for progress at the company.

According to the lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, the company engaged in systemic, companywide discrimination of female employees, especially those who took pregnancy leave. The company’s incentive plan which has been adopted across the company, also allegedly reduces compensation given to managers and directors, when their employees take federally and state-protected pregnancy leave. Because of this policy, the company actually blatantly discriminates against pregnant women and women with young children who need to take maternity leave.

Merck is the latest in a long line of pharmaceutical companies that are facing discrimination lawsuits filed by female employees who claim that these companies engage in discrimination practices, especially those aimed at women who take maternity leave. In May 2010, Novartis was ordered to pay damages of $250 million after a court found that the company had engaged in discriminatory practices against thousands of female employees. These employees had been subjected to discriminatory practices, in which they were passed over for promotions, given lower pay than their male counterparts, and discriminated against in pregnancy policies.

Often, California employment lawyers see that a person who has suffered a serious illness finds that the medical condition also affects other areas of his life, including his employment. A television anchor who suffered a stroke on the air and was then subjected to discrimination and wrongful termination, has now filed a lawsuit against the television station.

The anchor Doug Rafferty, had served as the news anchor for many years at WGME-TV. According to the lawsuit that has been filed against the station, Rafferty, who is now 61 years old, was serving as a news anchor for Channel 13 in Portland when he suffered a stroke on air during a broadcast in January 2006.

He had fully recovered from his stroke by 2007, and since then, he has not suffered any recurrence of symptoms. However, according to the lawsuit, that did not stop the TV station from discriminating against him. At the time of the stroke, his salary was approximately $93,000, with additionals of up to $30,000 a year and other wages. However, after he suffered the stroke he lost his extras although he retained his base salary.

In 2007, the station general manager informed him that he was being removed from the chair, or from his anchor position. At the time of being replaced, Rafferty was 55 years old, and his replacement was a person in his early 40s. He did some broadcast work over the years, but over a period of time, was given more duties in the information technology and computer infrastructure departments. Then, in 2011, he was informed that his salary would be further cut from $93,000 to $45,000 because his new duties were not as demanding as the older ones.

The lawsuit asks for a jury trial, as well as monetary damages for lost wages and benefits.