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.

$334,500 Age Discrimination Verdict Against Time Warner Cable Upheld on Appeal

ADEA - Age Discrimination in Employment Act

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has let stand a $334,500 jury verdict for a 61-year-old employee who the company fired over a single incident of backdating a form.

The Plaintiff, Glenda Westmoreland, had worked for a Time Warner Cable subsidiary for more than 30 years, was fired after instructing a subordinate to backdate a form to reflect the date of a related meeting, rather than the date the form was actually completed. TWC initially told her the infraction wasn't serious but later concluded that she had violated company policy prohibiting false statements and created "trust and integrity" issues. While walking her to her car, a supervisor told the Plaintiff, "You’ll get another job. Just go home and take care of those grandbabies.” Westmoreland sued, alleging age discrimination.

A jury found for Westmoreland and, on appeal, the 4th Circuit upheld the verdict. TWC’s "about face" on the disciplinary matter could give rise to a "suspicion of mendacity" about the company’s rationale for firing her, the court said. It also noted that company representatives had testified that there were lesser forms of discipline available. As a result, the court said, the jury could reasonably find that Westmoreland’s firing for one infraction that did not require termination was "such an extreme overreaction as to be pretextual." In addition, the jury could have found that the "grandbabies" comment was made by a supervisor who harbored age bias, the court said.

Age discrimination in employment is illegal, but two-thirds of older job seekers report encountering it. Employees between the ages of 46 and 65 (especially those nearing retirement age) are the most likely to be targeted. Those employees are often let go by employers who perceive them to be more expensive and less valuable than younger replacements.

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) exists to protect individuals who are 40 years of age or older from employment discrimination based on age. The ADEA's protections apply to both employees and job applicants. Under the ADEA, it is unlawful to discriminate against a person because of his/her age with respect to any term, condition, or privilege of employment -- including, but not limited to, hiring, firing, promotion, layoff, compensation, benefits, job assignments, and training.

You can read the full 4th Circuit opinion here.

Flight Attendants File EEOC Charge Alleging American Airlines Discriminates Against Women

AA Accused of Discrimination

The union that represents more than 27,000 American Airlines flight attendants has filed a charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging that the airline's attendance policy discriminates against women. The flight attendants charge that the attendance policy "fast tracks" flight attendants — a group that is 75% female — to potential discipline and discharge actions, while pilots — who are overwhelmingly male — are not subject to the policy.

This type of case is called a “disparate impact” case. Employment actions and policies can be problematic even if they do not intentionally discriminate against a protected group of workers. The law recognizes both "disparate treatment" discrimination (intentional acts of overt discrimination) and "disparate impact" discrimination (neutral policies and practices that have a disproportionate, adverse impact on a protected group and that cannot be justified by business necessity).

While disparate impact cases can come up with regard to any protected class (in this case, gender) they actually most often arise in the context of alleged age-based discrimination. Layoffs are often alleged to be based on age — a layoff targeting high-earning employees might have a disproportionate impact on long-tenured employees who happen to be older, for example. Similarly, recruiting efforts that focus on college campuses might unfairly exclude older workers.

Read More…

IKEA Hit with Yet Another Age Discrimination Lawsuit

IKEA Hit with 5 Age Discrimination Lawsuits

Alleging the company discriminates against its older employees and fosters a "corporate culture of age bias," IKEA is the target of a newly-filed class action lawsuit (Paine v. IKEA Holding US, Inc. et al., No. 19-cv-00723 (E.D. Pa. Feb. 21, 2019)). Since February 2018, at least five current and former employees have filed lawsuits against IKEA alleging age discrimination.

The lawsuits have all been filed in a period of just over a year. And they all argue that Ikea has fostered a workplace culture of discrimination, which systematically recruits and promotes young talent rather than workers over 40. The problem is alleged to have become even worse, once the company began an aggressive restructuring effort in 2017.

Whether protected-age job seekers can pursue lawsuits under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act without showing the alleged bias was intentional is a question on which federal courts are divided. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 declined to consider the issue in a case against R.J. Reynolds, leaving in place a holding by a federal appeals court in Atlanta that the ADEA doesn’t permit disparate impact or unintentional bias claims by job applicants. But a federal district court in California reached the opposite conclusion in a case against PricewaterhouseCoopers. Ultimately, this split in the circuits will have to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Age discrimination as a part of a large company restructuring can often be something that appears obvious while being simultaneously very difficult to prove. To make matters even more challenging, companies often offer severance packages to those being laid off, giving them only a few weeks to consult with an attorney and consider the issues.

If you find yourself the subject of a proposed layoff and you believe you may have been targeted due to your age (over 40) or if you have been given a severance agreement to review and consider, start looking for a qualified employment lawyer right away. Finding a qualified employment attorney who represents employees rather than companies may be more challenging than you think. In Texas, a good place to start is the Find-A-Lawyer page of the Texas Employment Lawyers Association. In other states, I would suggest you start with the National Employment Lawyers Association. Both groups feature lawyers who represent employees rather than employers and both have a lot of good information available for you to review and consider.

Jury Awards Administrative Assistant $850,000 in Age Discrimination Lawsuit

A jury has awarded a Temple University executive assistant $850,000 in an age discrimination lawsuit alleging that, among other things, she was told by her boss, a Chinese national, that "in China, they put women out to pasture at your age" (Briggs v. Temple University, No. 16-248 (E.D. Pa., July 19, 2018)).

After she was fired, Ruth Briggs sued the Philadelphia-based school, claiming age discrimination and hostile work environment during her tenure as an executive assistant to the chair of the university’s computer and information sciences department. Briggs also said she suffered retaliation when she repeatedly complained to the university’s human resources department. The university, however, said she was fired for performance deficiencies.

A unanimous federal jury awarded Briggs compensatory damages of $350,000 for pain and suffering, back pay loss of $250,000 and $250,000 in liquidated damages.

Read local media report here. 

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.