Lamberton Law Blog
Stay up to date on current developments in employment law and at the Lamberton Law Firm
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Protecting the Plaintiff in Sexual Harassment Cases
In sexual harassment cases, evidence of a sexual harassment victim's past sexual behavior or sexual predisposition - including evidence of a the victim's sexual behavior, fantasies, dress, speech or lifestyle, is inadmissible at trial. Such evidence can only be admitted where the proponent proves...
More NLRB violations for UPMC
In the ongoing battle between healthcare giant UPMC and workers seeking to unionize, an Administrative Law Judge recently found that UPMC engaged in unfair labor practices in violation of Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act by: 1. Denying non-employee organizers access to its...
Legislators to Supreme Court: Pregnancy Discrimination Act means what it says
More than 100 members of Congress filed an amicus curiae brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the decision rendered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejecting a former United Parcel Service worker's pregnancy and disability bias suit, arguing that the Pregnancy...
Eighth Circuit blows summary judgment appeal
Sometimes a court makes a decision so off-the-charts wrong, so at odds with the facts, and so heedless of the governing legal standard, one can only wonder what prejudice or stereotype motivated the court's thinking. The dismissal of Caryln Johnson's age discrimination case by a majority of the...
On the offense with the employer's sexual harassment investigation
Most sexual harassment and racial harassment cases have a front-end and back-end. The front-end consists of the underlying acts of sexual harassment (or racial harassment) against the employee, for which the employee complained. The back-end consists of the employer's investigation of and...
Attack on unions creates two Americas - one rich, one struggling
The level of inequality — which fell during the New Deal but has risen dramatically since the late 1970s — corresponds to the rise and fall of Unions in the United States. Take a look at this graph showing union membership and the income share claimed by the richest 10 percent of Americans...
The infamous bloc of five
This is the radical bloc of the United States Supreme Court - five men with life tenure, united in their right wing religious and political views - disdainful of precedent, disdainful of regulation and disdainful of all whose beliefs differ from their own. These are the men who gutted the...
Lamberton interviewed for CBS Pittsburgh piece on FMLA
Allegheny County officials are paying UPMC more than a half million taxpayer dollars to deny workers their rights to leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. In this piece by CBS Pittsburgh, Charles A. Lamberton discusses how employers can interfere with protected FMLA rights by making...
Another release bites the dust
This is the image I have in mind every time an H.R. person, corporate counsel or defense lawyer learns that a Release they drafted fails to comply with the requirements of the Older Workers Benefits Protection Act ("OWBPA"). OWBPA is an amendment to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act...
Racism outrages jury, judge not so much
Racist jokes supported a verdict against the employer in a race-based hostile work environment claim under Section 1981, along with an award of compensatory and punitive damages, but judge knew better than jury what the damages should have been. A tale of Fulmore v M & M Transport Services, Inc...
Terminated after reporting sexual harassment?
First, understand that you did the right thing. You were correct to complain because sexual harassment at work is illegal. Under the law, you also had a duty to complain so that the employer could investigate and hopefully put an end to the sexual harassment. Unfortunately, your employer fired...
Toomey filibusters Womens' Paycheck Fairness Act
To the Women of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: My name is Patrick Toomey and I am your United States Senator from the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. Here I am in my best charcoal gray and red tie. I am pointing because I am a serious man, and behind me is...
Democrats seek to reverse anti-worker Supreme Court ruling
Why do the five ultra-conservative members of the Supreme Court - Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito - seek to undermine the United States' Civil Rights Laws at every opportunity? Because those laws conflict with their right wing ideologies. And once again, Congress is being called on to...
EEOC sues CVS for overbroad severance agreements
The EEOC [1] has launched a massive lawsuit against CVS Caremark, the nation's second largest drugstore chain, for requiring employees to sign overbroad, misleading severance agreements that interfere with the rights to file charges of discrimination and participate in proceedings to enforce the...
Hat's off to Hon. Mark R. Hornak, U.S. District Court Judge
From the very first sentence of the Hon. Mark R. Hornak's opinion in McClung et al. v. Songer Steel Services, Inc., No. 12-341, 2014 WL 793133 (W.D.Pa.), the reader knew they were in for a special treat: "In this race discrimination suit, claims based solely on permissible inferences square off...