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Any manager, supervisor, or officer responsible for the hiring or firing of 50 or more employees may be liable in his or her individual capacity (this means personal liability) for violations of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA).  A federal court in Virginia ruled that Francis O’Leary, the Arlington County Treasurer, could be sued in his individual capacity for discharging Patricia Weth after she took FMLA leave for a cancer-related surgery.  The case is Weth v.…

In Brainware, Inc. v. Mahan, 1:11cv470 (LMB/TCB) (E.D. Va., Aug. 24, 2011), the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia denied an employee’s motion to dismiss claims brought against him by his former employer based upon his non-compete and post-employment conduct.  In that case, Brainware, the former employer, marketed and sold software applications in the Intelligent Data Capture and Recognition market, which involves IT products used in automating billing and product delivery. The defendant,

Businesses whose employees are paid in tips know that the minimum wage law doesn’t apply to them.  The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) requires employers to pay employees a statutory minimum hourly wage.  For each hour an employee works in excess of 40 hours in a given week, employers must pay an overtime wage that is at least one and one-half times the employee’s regular rate. Under limited circumstances, however, an employer may pay a

In Randolph v. ADT Security Services, Inc., the United States District Court for Maryland recently announced a broad ruling that an employee who attaches confidential and irrelevant documents to a complaint filed with a state agency alleging labor law violations cannot be penalized by the company for unreasonably disclosing company secrets.  The breadth of the court’s ruling is astounding.  Consider an employee of Coca-Cola who, along with a minimum wage complaint, attaches Coke’s secret formula.  Although

A man who alleges that his employer fired him for complaining about his unpaid wages, can sue his employer for wrongful discharge under the Bowman exception to Virginia’s at-will employment doctrine.  In the federal case of Lester v. TMG, Inc., Civil Action No. 2:12cv421 (Sep. 3, 2012), the company sought to dismiss the employee’s claim, arguing that because Virginia is an at-will employment jurisdiction, the employee could have been terminated at any time, with or without