How Do I Find An Employment Attorney?

Texas employment law attorney Chris McKinney discusses finding and hiring an employment lawyer.

So you need to hire an employment lawyer but you don’t know how to get started? Then this video is for you. Hiring an employment attorney to guide you through an employment-related dispute can be challenging.

For this reason it is important that you do some research and get your own materials together before you start making calls. Employment lawyer Chris McKinney Explains.

Employer Extending “Medical Leaves of Absence” Beyond 12 Weeks Creates an FMLA Trap for Unwary Employees

An opinion letter issued last week by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) makes clear that neither employers nor employees can decline to designate Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA)-qualifying leave as such. DOL also made clear in its letter that while employers are free to adopt leaves policies more generous than the FMLA, they cannot extend the FMLA's protections beyond 12 weeks (or 26 weeks for military caregiver leave). The effect of these interpretations can create a trap for the unwary employee.

 When an employer determines an employee needs leave because of an FMLA-qualifying reason, that leave must count toward his or her FMLA allotment, even if the employee requests otherwise. This means that employees cannot, for example, opt to take employer-provided sick or vacation time first; FMLA leave would have to run concurrently. And even if the employer chooses to grant more leave than the 12 weeks required by law, the employer cannot extend the law’s job protection to those additional weeks.

Here’s an example: An employee is out on FMLA leave due to a surgery or some other serious health condition. Near the end of the 12-week FMLA period, the employee’s doctor indicates that just a couple more weeks of leave would be beneficial medically.  The employee asks his or her employer and the leave extension is granted.  Then at the end of the leave period (now 14 weeks because of the extension) the employer says things have change and the employee had to be replaced or his/her job was eliminated.  Does the employee have protection under the FMLA in this scenario?  Probably not. 

Over the last few years, we have seen many employers building in FMLA extensions into their medical leave policies.  The policies often provide for 15 weeks of “Medical Leave” rather than the 12 weeks mandated by law. And, while more leave seems like a good thing, it can be a trap. This is because only the first 12 weeks of the 15-week medical leave period has job protection enforceable under the FMLA. If the employee stays out beyond 12 weeks, their job is no longer protected by federal law, even though the employer’s own policy granted 15 weeks of medical leave. 

Are extended “Medical Leave” policies an example of companies being generous or are they carefully laid traps for unwary employees?  A little of both perhaps. But the bottom line is that employees must remember that no matter what anyone at the company tells you, you only have FMLA job protection for the 12 weeks mandated by the statute.  

Related: New Lawsuit Takes On Common FMLA Trap

Tort Reform Is A Lie: Hot Coffee Still Being Used to Mislead

Here's the lie:

The lies used to support corporate efforts to continue to restrict regular people's access to the courthouse are powerful. And, sadly, they work. Routinely, potential clients who are sitting in my office will reference the famous McDonalds "Hot Coffee" case and try to assure me that their case isn't like the Hot Coffee case.  Their case is real. 

Here's the thing, the story everyone knows about the Hot Coffee case is a myth. It's a lie pushed by big business and their tort "reform" groups to poison the minds of potential jurors and make it harder for those who have been legitimately injured to received fair compensation. 

So, What Happened?:

In 1992, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck bought a cup of takeout coffee at a McDonald’s drive-thru in Albuquerque and spilled it on her lap. She sued McDonald’s and a jury awarded her nearly $3 million in punitive damages for the burns she suffered.

Before you hear all the facts, your initial reaction might be "Isn’t coffee supposed to be hot?" or "McDonald’s didn’t pour the coffee on her, she spilled it on herself!" But that would be before you hear all the facts.

Here are the facts:

Mrs. Liebeck was not driving when her coffee spilled, nor was the car she was in moving. She was the passenger in a car that was stopped in the parking lot of the McDonald’s where she bought the coffee. She had the cup between her knees while removing the lid to add cream and sugar when the cup tipped over and spilled the entire contents on her lap.

The coffee was not just “hot.” It was very dangerously hot. McDonald’s policy was to serve it at an extremely hot temperature that could cause serious burns in seconds. Mrs. Liebeck’s injuries were far from minor. She was wearing sweatpants that absorbed the coffee and kept it against her skin. She suffered third-degree burns (the most serious kind) and required skin grafts on her inner thighs and elsewhere. (See the video above for pictures.)

Importantly Mrs. Liebeck’s case was far from an isolated event. McDonald’s had received more than 700 previous reports of injury from its coffee, including reports of third-degree burns, and had paid settlements in some cases.

Mrs. Liebeck offered to settle the case for $20,000 to cover her medical expenses and lost income. But McDonald’s never offered more than $800, so the case went to trial. The jury found Mrs. Liebeck to be partially at fault for her injuries, reducing the compensation for her injuries accordingly.

But the jury’s punitive damages award made headlines — upset by McDonald’s unwillingness to correct a policy despite hundreds of people suffering injuries, they awarded Liebeck the equivalent of two days’ worth of revenue from coffee sales for the restaurant chain. Two days. That wasn’t, however, the end of it. The original punitive damage award was ultimately reduced by more than 80 percent by the judge. And, to avoid what likely would have been years of appeals, Mrs. Liebeck and McDonald’s later reached a confidential settlement for even less than that.

Here is just some of the evidence the jury heard during the trial:  

• McDonald’s operations manual required the franchisee to hold its coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit.

• Coffee at that temperature, if spilled, causes third-degree burns in three to seven seconds.

• The chairman of the department of mechanical engineering and biomechanical engineering at the University of Texas testified that this risk of harm is unacceptable, as did a widely recognized expert on burns, the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Burn Care and Rehabilitation, the leading scholarly publication in the specialty.

• McDonald’s admitted it had known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years. The risk had repeatedly been brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits.

• An expert witness for the company testified that the number of burns was insignificant compared to the billions of cups of coffee the company served each year.

• At least one juror later told the Wall Street Journal she thought the company wasn’t taking the injuries seriously. To the corporate restaurant giant those 700 injury cases caused by hot coffee seemed relatively rare compared to the millions of cups of coffee served. But, the juror noted, “there was a person behind every number and I don’t think the corporation was attaching enough importance to that.”

• McDonald’s quality assurance manager testified that McDonald’s coffee, at the temperature at which it was poured into Styrofoam cups, was not fit for consumption because it would burn the mouth and throat.

• McDonald’s admitted at trial that consumers were unaware of the extent of the risk of serious burns from spilled coffee served at McDonald’s then-required temperature.

• McDonald’s admitted it did not warn customers of the nature and extent of this risk and could offer no explanation as to why it did not.

After the verdict, one of the jurors said over the course of the trial he came to realize the case was about “callous disregard for the safety of the people.” Another juror said “the facts were so overwhelmingly against the company.”

That’s because those jurors were able to hear all the facts — including those presented by McDonald’s — and see the extent of Mrs. Liebeck’s injuries.

But that's not the story that the public has heard. Tort reform advocates lied about the facts of the case and the fake story gained traction. It went viral. So viral that now this story is what is most often cited by jurors and others when explaining why they don't trust lawyers, why they don't like lawsuits, and why they think plaintiffs are just out for a quick buck. 

And it's all a lie.

If you want to read more, start here.