Dallas employment lawyers sometimes offer free consultations in their Dallas, Texas law firms. Most of the well-known employment attorneys in Dallas and Fort Worth do not offer free consultations. They may charge a fee of $75-300. Some lawyers offer free consultations but these may be personal injury lawyers or other trial attorneys who take on […]
Dallas employment attorneys with free consultations? Read More »
EEOC mediations and lawsuits often end in settlement of claims for employment discrimination in Texas, including wrongful termination. An important question for many employees filing employment discrimination claims with the EEOC is what they can expect in a settlement. Many employment discrimination complaints filed with the EEOC in Dallas settle either in mediation with the
EEOC mediation and lawsuit settlement amounts in Texas Read More »
Here’s a tricky situation: you follow a specific instruction from your manager or a company policy. Then your employer fires you. Can this happen for following orders? Unfortunately, in most cases the answer: yes. Seems bizarre–and it is–but this is the nature of the at-will employment relationship. In an at-will employment relationship the employer can discipline an employee,
Can my Texas employer fire me for doing what my manager told me to do? Read More »
In a tough job market it’s always difficult to turn down a job but sometimes the company culture is so toxic or the boss is so insufferable that it’s more harmful to your health and career than the benefit of the paycheck. Of course, that’s an easy thing to say when you have a paycheck.
Texas Employment Attorney’s 10 Signs You Should Not Take That Job Read More »
People often used the term lawyer and attorney interchangeably in the United States to denote people who work as legal professionals. Most do so without giving much thought as to why our profession has two labels for the same legal job. These terms have slightly different meanings. (And not just because lawyer jokes tend to
Difference between attorney and lawyer Read More »
On January 1, 2016 the new open carry law goes into effect across Texas. You may have seen coverage of the open carry protests around Fort Worth, Dallas and other cities. Much of that coverage was over people openly carrying assault rifles. The new open carry law does not change the status of long guns,
Texas Open Carry Law and Your Employment in Texas Read More »
Sometimes an employee has a medical condition or disability that qualifies for FMLA leave and leave under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as a reasonable accommodation. The issue how to protect the employee’s job through protected leave under the ADA and FMLA is complicated. Each law provides a different set of rights to leave
Can I take FMLA leave and leave under the ADA at the same time? Read More »
All states except Montana follow the employment at will doctrine for employees. Although the employment at will doctrine governs employment relationships in Texas and most of the country since the days of the Founding Fathers, there is still a great deal of confusion about what this means. Part of the continuing confusion is the growing
What is the employment at will doctrine in Texas? Read More »
Employment law is probably the area of law most misunderstood of those that affect people on a daily basis. There is a lot of information floating around that is inaccurate or inapplicable to Texas law. Each state has its own set of labor and employment laws. What is true in one state may not be
7 misconceptions about Texas employment law Read More »
In Texas you can request certain criminal records are destroyed or expunged in what is called an expunction (or sometimes misspelled as expungement). An expunction orders public agencies, such as police departments, courts and the Department of Public Safety, to destroy records. The expunction will also order private entities that house and report this information
Should I get an arrest record expunged in Texas? Read More »
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released its 2014 performance report recently with some disappointing results about how charges of discrimination (the employment discrimination complaints filed with the EEOC) resolve. Of the 88,778 private sector charges filed the EEOC “resolved” 87,442 of those charges. That does not mean a favorable result occurred for the charging
You may remember a few years ago there was a big kerfuffle about a Fidelity Investments employee in the North Texas who was fired for allegedly discussing fantasy football at work under an anti-gambling policy. Arguments were had whether fantasy football is gambling and whether it was fair that the employee was fired. It went
Can you be fired for playing fantasy football at work in Texas? Read More »
In 2012 I had an article published in the National Law Review regarding social media and workplace harassment claims. In the article I discussed the different approaches courts take to whether they consider social media activity to be within the workplace or beyond the doors of the work site. For hostile work environment claims, it
Social media can ruin your employment in Texas Read More »
The headline sounds crazier than the facts behind this case, which involves a disability discrimination suit on a wrongful termination. The case arose in a California federal district court against the employer, Walgreens. (The case is EEOC v. Walgreens.) The case involves an employee who broke a workplace rule to avoid a diabetic shock and lost her
EEOC lands $180,000 settlement with employer who fired an employee for eating chips Read More »
This month the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears appeals from Texas, delivered a surprising appellate decision on overtime pay for workers in long haul freight transport in Allen v. Coil Tubing Services, LLC. In this case, the appellate court held that workers could be identified by class in determining whether an exemption
Fifth Circuit Deals Blow to Overtime Pay with MCA Exemption Read More »
Today’s post discusses an interesting case brought in Alabama under a racial harassment or hostile work environment case. This case is Adams v. Austal, U.S.A., LLC and the Eleventh Circuit’s appellate court’s decision is available here. The appeal deals with whether an employee may rely on evidence that the workplace was objectively hostile that he
Racial harassment case recently decided by the Eleventh Circuit Read More »
Sarbanes-Oxley, passed in 2002 in the wake of the Enron disaster, includes a protection in Section 806 that employees of a publicly traded company from retaliation for whistleblowing on accounting fraud and other prohibited acts under Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). In the past, most courts held that the employees of contractors to public companies did not enjoy
Sarbanes-Oxley retaliation claims apply to employees of contractors Read More »
Back in 2012, several local Dallas, Fort Worth and Denton media outlets reported a racial discrimination suit involving a prosecutor at the Denton County District Attorney‘s office and her allegations that an assistant DA, much higher up the food chain, had made racially discriminatory remarks that constituted a hostile work environment. The trial court awarded
Denton County prevails in racial discrimination appeal Read More »
If you have been anywhere near a TV, radio, computer, or even two cans tied to a string, you have heard about or seen Miley Cyrus’s performance at the VMA. Let’s dispense with the details about her performance. Miley Cyrus does not know how to twerk. If Miley Cyrus is your entire world of information
Twerking while working? Probably a bad idea in Texas. Read More »
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released its new Strategic Enforcement Plan (SEP) this spring that includes six key anti-discrimination priorities that the agency will be focusing on through 2016. These new anti-discrimination enforcement priorities reflect the intent to increase litigation as both a deterrent effect on employers to increase their anti-discrimination policies to prevent
EEOC New Anti-Discrimination Enforcement Priorities Read More »