The importance of careful contract review and communication with counsel were recently highlighted in the case of Dahua Technology USA Inc. v. Feng Zhang, in which the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts denied an employer’s attempt to...
Employment
In disability discrimination lawsuit, former employee held bound by inconsistent statement made in Social Security Disability benefits application
Under the principle of judicial estoppel, a party to a lawsuit is precluded from asserting a claim that is inconsistent with a prior statement or position. In Thompson v. Gold Medal Bakery, Inc., the First Circuit recently applied this principle in the context of a...
Employees Beware: Appeals Court Allows Termination for Exercising Statutory Right
Massachusetts law gives employees the right to place a written statement in their personnel file if they disagree with information their employer has put into the file that has or may negatively affect the employee's qualification for employment, promotion, transfer,...
Massachusetts Federal Court Rules on Employee Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act
In a decision recently issued in the case of Maldonado et al. v. Cultural Care, Inc. et al., a group of "local childcare consultants" ("LCCs") brought a class action suit against Cultural Care, a company that places foreign au pairs with host families located in the...
Payment of Wages and Earned Vacation Not Due Until Actual Date of Discharge, Even If Employee Stopped Working Earlier
In Knous v. Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc., the United States District Court for the District Court of Massachusetts awarded summary judgment to an employer on the employee's claims of unpaid wages and earned vacation at the time of discharge. As a result of...
Superior Court Holds That, Even With Advance Notice To Its Employees, An Employer May Not Avoid Its Obligations Under Sullivan v. Sleepy’s LLC To Pay Separate and Additional Overtime
In the recent Superior Court case of Martinez v. Burlington Motor Sports, Inc., et al., a defendant auto dealership moved to dismiss a commission-based employee's claim for overtime wages pursuant to G. L. c. 151, §§ 1A and 1B, arguing that the Massachusetts...
Massachusetts District Court Applies Precondition Test to Determine That Employees Are Not Entitled to Overtime Pay for Employee-Required Training
In a recent Memorandum and Order, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts District Court granted summary judgment to a group of defendant banks after applying a "precondition" test established by the First Circuit regarding overtime pay to...
First Circuit Rules That Massachusetts State Wage Act Not Preempted by Federal Law
In the recent case of Capron v. Office of Attorney Gen. of Mass., the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals issued an interesting ruling regarding the intersection of federal and state law, affirming a U.S. District Court order of dismissal providing that state wage...
First Circuit Holds that Employee’s Termination Not Violative of Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing
In the recent case of Suzuki v. Abiomed, Inc., the First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a U.S. District Court order granting summary judgment to the defendant employer, holding that the company's termination of an employee approximately fifteen months prior to the...
A Disloyal Corporate Officer, Ordered to Forfeit His Compensation To His Employer, Fails in His Attempt to Reduce The Amount of Restitution Under the Joint Tortfeasors Act
In a case of first impression, the Business Litigation Session (Davis, J.) recently declined to reduce the amount of restitution a disloyal corporate officer had been ordered to pay to his employer in connection with a judgment against the corporate officer. In so...
Sign up to the Fitch briefs
Fitch Law Partners LLP reports news and insights on complex litigation topics. Clients, colleagues and friends may receive The Fitch Briefs by signing up here.