Articles Posted in Employment Law

To be discriminated against at work means that the employee is being protected by specific legal categories, such as the color of their skin or their ethnicity. When an employer violates employee’s rights to be free of discrimination, the employer is treating the employee worse because of this protected category, mainly the color of their…

The Family Medical Leave Act is a federal statute that allows employees to take a certain amount of leave time for very important events such as, for example, the birth of a child or to care for a very close family member. To fall within that statute, the employee has to work for a certain…

A fiduciary duty is the highest level of duty the law recognizes. It requires the fiduciary to place the interests of the beneficiary ahead of the fiduciary’s. In other words, whatever the transaction the fiduciary is engaging in, it has to be solely for the benefit of the beneficiary or the client.

Typically, neither the employee nor the employer has to give a notice of termination. There can be exceptions to that. The most common exception, if there’s a written contract, one party has agreed to give a certain amount of written notice to the other party. If that happens, then the contract will trigger certain events…

If a person is laid off and a younger person is kept, that’s not necessarily discrimination. It’s possible but not necessarily. There could be valid business reasons that the employer would have to retain a more junior employee, because, for example, their pay was substantially less than the person who’s laid off, or their work…

Sometimes employees will lose their job if they blew the whistle. Sometimes the employees have not legitimately blown the whistle, but they’re simply trying to protect themselves from their own actions of the business and they’re trying to come with something to get back at the employer. Other times employees are legitimately objecting to activities…

Some employers might wish to know whether a job applicant or current employee previously filed worker’s compensation claims. At first glance, such information might seem relevant and even useful to employers. For example, an employer in an accident-prone industry might want to know if the job applicant has a history of repeatedly filing worker’s compensation…

Under Florida law, employers could face civil liability for the harm an employee causes to a third party. For that reasons, employers might wish to conduct a thorough investigation of a job applicant’s or current employee’s criminal record. According to federal guidelines, however, federal law could impose liability on employers who base their employment decisions…

Background checks can be a valuable tool for employers. A thorough background check can shield an employer from future liability. However, both federal and state law place limits on what the employer can lawfully do regarding background checks. One such federal law is the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”). An employer who wishes to know…