Liquidated damages are a type of monetary compensation to which an injured party is entitled when a statute provides for this additional relief or when it is available under contract. When liquidated damages are an available remedy under statutory law, the statute will generally provide guidelines to courts to help…
Employers are increasingly attempting to avoid having to pay sales employees their rightfully earned and owed sales commissions during the COVID pandemic. In many cases, a company has no legal basis to avoid paying sales representatives their earned commissions by unilaterally retroactively changing the terms and conditions of how sales…
Disability discrimination remains a persistent problem in the workplace. But it does not happen only at work. Last month, a Norwood, New Jersey teenager was cut from her school’s volleyball team because she has epilepsy. After her father reported what he believed to be discriminatory conduct and demanded that the…
Late last month the state of California, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the state of Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, the state of Maryland and the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, together filed a lawsuit against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) stemming from the…
While there are federal and state laws that protect employees from racial discrimination in the workplace throughout the country, these laws are not always uniform in terms of the severity or pervasive enough of the complained of conduct that constitute an actionable hostile work environment. Generally speaking, when the racially…
In the wake of several recent equal pay settlements between female university professors and their employers, the newest litigation of this ilk has popped up in New Jersey. A lawsuit filed under the New Jersey Equal Pay law in state court last week by five women professors at Rutgers University…
Two recent New Jersey lawsuit settlements highlight the prevalent issues of sexual harassment and sex discrimination that woman police officers continue to face in the workplace. These cases illustrate how important it is for male-dominated work environments such as police departments to take preventative measures against sexual harassment and to…
The absence of pay equity between men and women, commonly known as the “gender wage gap” has been a newsworthy yet unresolved manifestation of gender discrimination for decades. Pay inequities exist in virtually all industries and professions and are not limited to gender disparities. Most recently, one of New Jersey’s…
In recent celebrity employment law news, former reality television star, Angelina Larangeira (nee Pivarnick) settled a federal employment discrimination lawsuit against the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) for $350,000. Pivarnick has been working as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) in Staten Island since 2016, where she…
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed legislation this month that makes it a crime to use 911 as a tool to intimidate another person based on his or her race. The bill, which has already taken effect, was introduced to the State Senate on June 29, 2020. It amends and…