Green Savits Employment Law Blog

Last week, I settled a difficult age discrimination case for a substantial six figure number (which must be kept otherwise confidential as to its terms). Even though the lawsuit was brought under New Jersey's anti-discrimination lawsuit, the case was filed in New Jersey federal district court. Why?  Because our client worked out of his home office in New Jersey but the company and indiviudals involved in firing him all lived and worked outside of New Jersey thus creating what is known as diversity jurisdiction. This means that the employer could choose to remove/transfer the case to federal court because of a statute passed by Congress in...

The federal  3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia yesterday overturned the dismissal of an in-house patent lawyer's claim that he was fired because he refused to participate in conduct that would have violated the New Jersey Rules of Professional Conduct governing attorneys and the rules of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  In that case, a  French beauty company required patent in-house counsel to satisfy a quota of patent applications which if not met, would result in termination.  Plaintiff objected that he could not submit applications that did not have a good faith basis to be patentable which violated NJ RPC’s...

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals (covering New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the Virgin Islands) ruled last week that a supervisor's use of the "n" word while threatening to fire African American employees is sufficient to allow a lawsuit to proceed under federal civil rights statutes.  The appellate decision reversed the trial court's dismissal of the case and stated that the district court relied on the wrong legal standard when doing so.  Click on the decision to see why the court ruled as it did.

If you believe that remarks in the workplace about you and your status are so severe as to make your work environment hostile...

In 2010, Congress passed the Dodd Frank Act which in part was designed to expand legal protection to whistleblowing employees of publicly traded companies who disclose, object to or refuse to participate in conduct that violates federal securities laws. On June 26, 2017, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to decide whether the Dodd Frank Act protects a whistleblowing employee who objects to federal securities laws violations to company management but not to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Thus, the Supreme Court will resolve conflicting rulings...