Uncategorized

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

Sometimes, business growth is not a good thing . . . Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 (Title VII), the federal law barring employment discrimination, places caps on certain types of employee damages based on employer size.  This creates uncertainty for employers because a company that grows or shrinks in size could be subject to much higher or lower caps based on when its size is determined.  Addressing this uncertainty, the First

A former employee appears to be trading on her inside knowledge to the detriment of a company.  It appears that the common law “duty of loyalty” will not protect the company.  This case is a lesson for employers – have employees who have access to confidential information sign non-disclosure and non-compete agreements.  A current case in the Federal District Court for Maryland is testing the strength of an employee’s duty of loyalty to a former

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