15 law schools named in employment class action

Law school alums facing a tough job market are suing their alma maters. At least 15 individual class action law suits have been filed by a total of 73 law school grads who allege that the schools falsely inflated graduate employment rates.

The suits allege the schools inflated the data, in part, by employing their own graduates in temporary jobs and counting graduates working in non-legal-related jobs and part-time and temporary jobs as employed. “We believe that some in the legal academy have done a disservice to the profession and the nation by saddling tens of thousands of young lawyers with massive debt for a degree worth far less than advertised,” stated David Anziska, on behalf of Plaintiffs’ counsel.

The suits also allege that the schools inflated salary data as well.

Law School Transparency Executive Director Kyle McEntee tells ELC that the ABA needs to address this issue.

NLRB Ruling – Outten & Golden’s Rachel Bien

NLRB Ruling from Sequence Media on Vimeo.

Outten & Golden’s Rachel Bien discusses the National Labor Relations Board ruling last week that employers could not prevent workers from filing work-related group or class actions, essentially banning employment agreements at many companies that require workers to pursue all claims individually through arbitration. 

In a decision that will no doubt anger many companies, the labor board concluded that a federal law protecting workers’ right to engage in concerted action trumps any arbitration agreement that bars them from bringing group claims. The ruling applies to nonmanagement private sector workers, union and nonunion, from low-wage restaurant workers to well-paid employees on Wall Street.

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John Elway’s Manhattan dealership faces discrimination lawsuit

Los Angeles Times – A former sales manager at John Elway’s Manhattan Beach Toyota dealership filed a lawsuit accusing the outlet’s general manager of racial discrimination, harassment and maintaining a hostile work environment for minorities.

The suit, which also names the famed former Denver Broncos quarterback and two partners, also alleged that Timothy Sandquist, an 11-year employee at Elway’s dealership, was paid less than his white peers and was repeatedly passed over for promotions and raises, according to the lawsuit.

A lawyer for the dealership, James McDonald, denied the lawsuit’s allegations and said the complaint contains many factual errors. He declined to comment further.

According to the complaint, the dealership’s general manager, Darrell Sperber, created a hostile work environment for minority employees through his “rampant harassment and use of racial slurs.”

The lawsuit also alleged that Sperber, hired as general manager in 2007, retaliated against employees who reported discrimination or harassment.

Janette Wipper, an attorney for Sandquist, said co-owners Elway, Mitchell Pierce and Jerry Williams were notified of these complaints after an outside company conducted a general employee survey.

Sandquist, an African American who started as a sales representative in 2000, became a sales manager in 2008. He resigned last year and subsequently filed a complaint with the state’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

The lawsuits seeks unspecified damages that include back pay and punitive damages.

Slave Labor Targeted In California, Social Media

Justin Dillon’s rock band was touring Eastern Europe when he met some college students who told him they were about to get work in the West. They were eager to begin what they were sure would be their new MTV-like lives.

Dillon dug deeper and asked to see their documents. He warned the young women they likely were about to be trafficked into the sex trade or sweatshops.

They brushed him off. They wanted desperately to believe the $2,200 they had paid a facilitator to get them service industry jobs would make all their dreams come true.

“They immediately felt embarrassed, but then emboldened,” he recalls of the 2003 exchange. “They said, ‘I mean, look around. I’ll take my chances on this. You think I’m going to stick around here?’”

That conversation changed his life — and his life’s mission.

Today, the 42-year-old Berkeley rocker heads up a popular social media campaign to combat slavery. With a $200,000 grant from the State Department, he recently launched www.slaveryfootprint.org , which helps people identify the slave labor used for their own consumer goods. It is approaching 2 million hits.

He belongs to a coalition of anti-slave labor groups sharing an $11.5 million grant from Google’s philanthropy arm.

Read more at ABC News

Key witness in Penn State abuse scandal testifies

HARRISBURG, Pa, Dec 16 (Reuters) – A key witness in the sex abuse case of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky testified on Friday that he had no doubt he saw Sandusky in a sexual act with a 10-year-old boy in 2002.

Image via neontommy.com

“I believe he was sexually molesting the boy,” Mike McQueary, a graduate assistant in the university’s football program in 2002, told a court hearing, adding at a later point that he “has no doubt” he saw Sandusky in a sexual act.

But McQueary also said: “I did not see insertion nor was there any protest, screaming or yelling.”

“I heard rhythmic slapping sounds, two or three slaps that sounded like skin on skin.”

He said he was “shocked, horrified, not thinking straight. I was distraught.”

The case has shattered the national image of Penn State as a big-time college football program that also stressed high academic and moral standards, and has shocked many Americans because the alleged sexual abuse may have gone on for so long without being stopped.

McQueary testified for two hours at a hearing concerning charges against former Penn State athletic director Tim Curley and finance official Gary Schultz. McQueary took questions from Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Bruce Beemer as well as lawyers for Curley and Schultz.

About 100 reporters and 50 to 60 members of the public jammed the courtoom, with some journalists having to monitor the hearing from a different part of the building.

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Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations

Image via Lifenews.com

Feature Image courtesy of Christopher Halloran Shuterstock.com

By Sandra Pullman with Outten & Golden’s Sexual Harassment Practice Groupl

Herman Cain, a leading candidate in the primaries for the Republican nominee for president, confirmed today that he had been the subject of sexual harassment allegations while serving as the head of the National Restaurant Association. Coming in the wake of the twentieth anniversary of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, the charges against Mr. Cain remind us how ever-present sexual harassment is in the workplace.

Anita Hill has reminded us that she came forward not expecting any remedy for her claim regarding the conduct of Clarence Thomas but to point out that such conduct made him unfit for the office he sought-a lifetime appointment to the United States Supreme Court. The same is true of Mr. Cain. If he sexually harassed female subordinates, then his fitness for the office of president of the United States is called into question.

We are of course mindful of the claim that there is a “witch hunt” going on, or at least political opportunism, motivated more by a desire to injure a surging candidate than to vindicate the rights of women. Apparently, investigative journalists have uncovered this story as a part of the focus on Cain as a public figure. Why didn’t the woman come forward long ago, some have asked? If they entered into a confidential settlement agreement, that alone explains their failure ever to make their claims public. One thing we know for sure-the rush to call women liars is very troubling and depressingly familiar. Public opinion was “against” Anita Hill at the time, too, but today, a large majority says she was telling the truth.

Let’s hope we have learned something in the last 20 years. This time, let’s approach this issue with a shared understanding that sexual harassment in the workplace is unacceptable and, in a candidate, it is a disqualifier.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-stump/96890/the-cain-clarence-thomas-connection

Interns file suit against Fox Searchlight over “Black Swan” wages

Former Black Swan movie interns Alex Footman and Eric Glatt filed a federal lawsuit against Fox Searchlight Pictures for violating labor laws by hiring unpaid interns to do the menial work typically associated with internships — fetching coffee, taking out trash — which they argue should have been done by paid employees instead. Elizabeth Wagoner of the employment law firm Outten and Golden who is representing Footman and Glatt is interviewed for The Employment Law Channel

Solyndra Employee Files WARN Act Class Action: Outten & Golden’s Roupinian, Raisner

Employees at Solyndra weren’t given 60 days notice about their impending layoffs as required by both federal and state law.
Under federal and state legislation called the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act — or WARN Act, employers must give 60 days notice when making layoffs of more than 50 employees.
On Aug. 31, Peter Kohlstadt was one of 1,100 Solyndra employees to be let go, effective immediately, with no warning. Two days later, he filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging they failed to give him the 60 days’ notice of layoff required by law, and withheld hundreds of hours worth of vacation pay he had accrued over the previous four years.

Since Kohlstadt filed the suit in the U.S. District Court of Northern California, Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and about 100 other former Solyndra employees in the same predicament have joined the complaint that Kohlstadt brought on behalf of all 1,100 former employees.

Kohlstadt is represented in court by Outten & Golden, a New York firm that specializes in unlawful termination and WARN cases and host of LBN’s Employment Law Channel.
Rene Roupinian and Jack Raisner with Outten and Golden’s WARN Act practice group tells ELC…”in a bankruptcy case like this the employees come ahead of the creditors.”

Wall Street losing women at the top: Kathleen Peratis

Sallie Krawcheck’s departure from a high-ranking job at Bank of America spotlights a trend on Wall Street: Women, in recent years, have lost their jobs more often than men.

Outten & Golden’s Kathleen Peratis says “Sallie Krawcheck is only an indication of a broader problem that goes much deeper on Wall Street.”

Former Yahoo CEO May have Violated Disparagement Clause-Kathleen Peratis

When Carol Bartz was fired earlier this week as CEO of Yahoo! She was given a healthy severance package of $10 million and a non-disparagement clause.
That $10 million is now in question after Bartz, still a member of the board herself, called the other members a bunch of ‘doofuses’ in an interview with Fortune magazine.

Outten & Golden’s Kathleen Peratis talks about issues relating to these big contracts and how the disparagement clause works.