Skip Navigation or Skip to Content

Mark J. Girouard News Archive

Posted May 28, 2019

Home Health Care Misclassification Lawsuits Rising

Plaintiffs’ wage-and-hour class action lawyers are constantly looking for new groups of employees whom they can claim are inappropriately classified as exempt. In previous decades, plaintiffs’ lawyers focused on mortgage adjusters, truck drivers, and assistant store managers. In 2019, plaintiffs’ lawyers are directing their attention to another group of employees: home health clinicians.

Posted May 21, 2019

Tech Support Independent Contractor Class Claims Climbing

Wage-and-hour class litigation tends to come in waves. In 2019, we are seeing another wave gather on the horizon: misclassification collective actions alleging that companies have improperly classified at-the-elbow (“ATE”) support workers as contractors and thus denied them the overtime required under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and parallel state laws.

Newsroom image for the post Candid Job Applicant Feedback: A Cool Favor That Can Put You in Hot Water

Posted April 17, 2019

Candid Job Applicant Feedback: A Cool Favor That Can Put You in Hot Water

For employers turning down applicants, frank feedback hasn’t exactly been standard protocol. Historically, employers have used boilerplate rejection letters, or simply silence, to turn down applicants. Yet whether it’s due to shortages in talent, generational changes in the workforce, online …

Newsroom image for the post Appellate Court Rules that Age Bias Disparate Impact Theory Pertains to Employees, Not Applicants

Posted January 25, 2019 with Tags , , , , ,

Appellate Court Rules that Age Bias Disparate Impact Theory Pertains to Employees, Not Applicants

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on January 23, 2019, that assertions of age discrimination arising from facially neutral hiring policies can be brought only by a company’s employees, not by job applicants. In Kleber v. CareFusion Corporation, the court agreed with recent rulings by other courts – most recently the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Villareal v. R.J. Tobacco Co. – holding that under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), only employees can state a claim that a company’s actions or policies resulted in an unlawful “disparate impact” due to age.

Newsroom image for the post Employers Should Immediately Review Recruitment Ad Practices Due to Facebook Class Litigation

Posted January 17, 2019 with Tags , ,

Employers Should Immediately Review Recruitment Ad Practices Due to Facebook Class Litigation

A little over a year ago, three major employers—T-Mobile, Amazon, and Cox Communications—were sued for allegedly discriminating on the basis of age in the way they recruited new employees via Facebook. The plaintiffs’ lawyers targeted not only these three employers but also asserted claims against a “defendant class” of every employer that used age restrictions in their recruiting advertisements on Facebook. They also sent demand letters to scores of employers and filed charges of discrimination against yet more. Though the lawsuit and charge investigations are ongoing, the plaintiffs’ lawyers are now sending a new wave of demands to more employers and filing more charges of discrimination with the EEOC and state enforcement agencies. Employers who have not yet been targeted should take steps now to prepare.

Posted December 13, 2017 with Tags ,

One Resolution Employers Don’t Want for the New Year

Heightened by an increase in social activism and the #metoo movement, many publically traded companies – especially those in the technology and retail sectors – may find themselves facing a New Year’s resolution they’d rather not have in 2018: a shareholder resolution demanding public disclosure of detailed information about gender pay differences.

Posted January 7, 2015

Can the EEOC Be Trusted to Police Its Own Compliance?

Labor and employment Shareholder Mark Girouard discusses Mach Mining, LLC v. EEOC, which poses the question of whether employers may challenge in court the EEOC’s filing of a lawsuit on the basis that the Commission failed to attempt resolution in good faith.

Scroll to the top of the web page anchor link.