In Okoli v. City of Baltimore, the Fourth Circuit handed down a relatively rare decision last week overruling a district court’s grant of summary judgment for the employer.  While a decision favoring the employee over the employer is a relatively rare occurrence in the Fourth Circuit, on its face the decision does not seem very surprising because the facts seem clearly in favor of the employee.  But a side-by-side comparison of the Court of Appeals’ decision with

In Lewis-Gale Medical Center, LLC v. Alldredge, the Supreme Court of Virginia recently refused to broaden the range of circumstances under which a plaintiff could successfully assert a tortuous interference with contract claim.  The case involved a physician who was an employee of a physician staffing service under contract with a hospital to provide physician staffing.  After the hospital suspected the physician of encouraging labor unrest among the nursing staff, the hospital complained to the staffing service

Wage and hour law violations have become a significant stumbling block for local companies in recent years.  There is no doubt that courts have seen an increase in litigation based on employers misclassifying or miscalculating employees’ wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”).  In the recent case of Jin v. Any Floors, Inc., et al., Civ. No. 1:10-cv-1201 (E.D. Va. Mar. 5, 2012), the Federal Court in the Eastern District of Virginia gave insight into

The U.S. District Court in Richmond, VA granted summary judgment earlier this month to a defendant school board in a suit alleging both race and age discrimination.  Judge Gibney’s memorandum opinion in Harris v. Powhatan County School Board (No. 3:11-cv-224) illustrates how critical it is for plaintiff employees to gather and present evidence of their employers’ discriminatory intent. Alexander Harris, a 70 year old African-American male, had worked for Powhatan County Schools for more than fifty

Federal employment law requires employees to first file notice with an administrative agency, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), before bringing a federal lawsuit claiming discrimination.  The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, covering Maryland, Virginia, and other mid-Atlantic states, has grappled for years with how much notice an employee must provide in the administrative process before bringing a discrimination lawsuit.  It has recently decided the issue under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in a