Green Savits Employment Law Blog

Employment Attorneys Serving Northern and Central New Jersey

New Jersey's Protection for Whistleblowers
November 17, 2014

Every employee sees and hears things around the workplace. It’s hard not to. Sometimes employees see, hear, or are asked to be involved in something they don’t feel comfortable doing because they believe it is wrong or illegal. Understandably, many of these employees are afraid of the potential repercussions of reporting or protesting what they’ve seen, heard, or been asked to do. But before you decide to follow the three monkeys and “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” it is important to know how and when you are protected for speaking out against wrongful conduct in the workplace.

Under New Jersey law, someone who reports...

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Category: Employee Contracts, Whistleblower Retaliation
Techs EEO Problems (contd)
November 12, 2014

Last month, I wrote about the IT industry's problem with its treatment of female and/or older employees.  The obstacles that these employees face have been documented in the media and through our own firm's cases.  But, do these anecdotal episodes mean that IT employers are engaging in illegal discrimination?  The answer is not a clear cut one but depends on the circumstances.

While IT work environments may not be as congenial or friendly to female and/or older employees, that does not necessarily prove illegal discrimination. But as my colleague Glen Savits alluded to in an earlier post, it may be relevant circumstantial evidence...

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Category: Discrimination, Employee Contracts, Wrongful Discharge
Self Help: The Risks of Copying Documents to Support Your Discrimination Claim
November 05, 2014

Many potential clients come into our office to pursue their claims of discrimination with stacks of documents to show us that they think support their claims. Some of the documents are merely their own performance evaluations or company policies that they were given to them at the start of their employment. However, sometimes clients bring us copies of emails, company financial information, or other employees’ performance evaluations that they helped themselves too when they still had access to their employers’ documents. This always begs the question, “was their self-help legal?”

Self-help copying of documents is always a risk....

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Category: Discrimination, Wrongful Discharge
Reasonable Accommodations for Pregnant Women in NYC
October 21, 2014

As a brief follow up to my October 16 blog posting, New York City also passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, requiring NYC employers (with at least 4 employees) to grant reasonable accommodations to their pregnant employees. See N.Y.C. Admin. Code 8-107(22). Not only are employers required to grant reasonable accommodations that would not be an undue hardship or prevent an employee from satisfying the "essential requisites" of their job, but they also must notify their employees of these new rights, in writing, by May 30, 2014.
Category: Discrimination, Family and Medical Leave
Circumstantial Evidence
October 20, 2014

            “You can’t prove anything, detective.  All you have is circumstantial evidence!”  How often do we think of that movie cliché whenever we think about circumstantial evidence?  We think of it as inferior to eyewitness or other direct evidence.  The fact is that circumstantial evidence can be very powerful and is the primary way that discrimination cases are proven. 

            If, when you go to bed, there is no snow on the ground, but when you wake up there is a foot of snow outside, you can conclude that it snowed overnight.  That is circumstantial evidence.  Now suppose I told you I was up all night looking out the...

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Category: Discrimination, Employee Contracts
Working While Pregnant
October 16, 2014

I’ve never been pregnant, so I don’t know what it’s like. But in writing this blog, I called my cousin who is pregnant with her first child, due in just 2 months, and still working hard. I asked her, “What is it like to work while pregnant?” What followed was a laundry list of very reasonable complaints: she hates wearing business attire, she becomes famished or queasy without warning, and she has to use the bathroom a ton.  “The baby doesn’t care if you are in a meeting,” she told me.  This sounds pretty awful and, up until this year, employers didn’t have to make life any easier for their pregnant employees.

However, on January...

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Category: Discrimination, Family and Medical Leave
Equal Opportunity Jerk or Actionable Hostile Environment Harassment?
October 08, 2014

Sometimes bosses suck. It is one of life’s unfortunate truths. Some bosses yell at or criticize employees constantly; some blame employees for their own mistakes; some hover over their employees’ every move; some set unreasonable demands. They make you hate going to work and make every day unbearable. But do you have case against them for hostile environment harassment?

The answer is (as with most lawyerly answers) it depends.

Under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, employees have the right to be free from harassment based on their membership in a protected class. This means, for example, that you are protected from...

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Category: Hostile Work Environment
Tech's EEO Problems
October 07, 2014

This blog post is the inaugural of what our firm hopes will become a tradition of discussing workplace issues. This post will lead off with employment issues that we have observed over the past several years in the tech industry. 

Particularly with regard to sales, tech workplaces are usually populated by younger males in their 20's, 30's and 40's who operate in a fraternity like setting, as though their college days have never ended. This makes life very uncomfortable for males who hit their late 40's and 50's and women who choose this line of work.  In fact, the New York Times highlighted how women in tech workforces are forced...

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Category: Discrimination, Employee Contracts
Frizalone vs New Jersey Transit
February 24, 2009

On February 24 and 25, 2009, after a month-long trial, a jury sitting in the Superior Court of New Jersey for Essex County in Newark unanimously found that New Jersey Transit Police Lieutenant Theresa Frizalone was denied four separate promotions to Captain in retaliation for her complaints of gender discrimination. The jury awarded $339,000 in compensatory damages for lost pension and retiree medical benefits, $210,000 in compensatory damages for emotional distress, and $1,000,000 in punitive damages against New Jersey Transit, for a total of $1,549,000 in damages. With a post-trial award of attorneys’ fees and prejudgment interest, the...

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Category: Discrimination
Dewees vs RCN
July 15, 2005

In this sex and age discrimination case, plaintiff alleged that she was fired by her employer RCN Corp. in 1998. Plaintiff was the highest-ranking woman in the company when she was fired. Although the trial court dismissed the case saying that plaintiff had not presented sufficient evidence to prove her claims, the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court reversed the lower court’s decision and sent the case back to the lower court for trial. The case then settled in 2005 for approximately $1.3 million.

The Appellate Division decision is attached below.

Dewees Decision - PDF Download
Category: Discrimination
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