Effective as of January 1, 2024, California employers will be required to provide their workers with additional paid sick leave on a statewide basis. Currently, state law requires that each employee be provided with a means of accruing at least 24 hours or 3 days of paid sick leave each year. This can be accomplished by frontloading the mandatory minimum...
Read MoreEmployees Maintain PAGA Standing Even After Individual Claims are Submitted to Arbitration
In the latest development in what seems like a never-ending battle between employers’ efforts to limit their employees’ potential legal claims to individual claims only and employees’ efforts to ensure that they can bring representative or class claims against their employers, the California Supreme Court has determined that employees...
Read MoreEmployers Have a Duty to Protect Their Employees From Cybertheft
Everything these days is online, it seems. So it is not too surprising that a court recently ruled that an employer has a duty to protect its employees from cybertheft. That is precisely what the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled in Ramirez v. The Paradies Shops, LLC. In that case, a Carlos Ramirez, on behalf of himself and a class of...
Read MoreSupreme Court Ruling Is All Bite, No Bark for Prospective Infringers
In a highly publicized case, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in favor of Jack Daniels and against a company that marketed and sold a spoof dog chew toy. The toy was shaped like a Jack Daniels’ whiskey bottle. It used similar coloring and stylized labeling as the Jack Daniels’ bottle. Finally, it contained other similarities to...
Read More“I’m Afraid I Can’t Do That, Dave” and Other Lessons from Mata v. Avianca Airlines
The chatbots are coming! The chatbots are coming! And, apparently, they want to practice law. A New York attorney recently discovered the significant risk of relying on ChatGPT to do one’s legal research. In the case, the plaintiff, Robert Mata, claimed his knee was injured when it was struck by a serving cart during a flight, and he sued the airline,...
Read MoreEmployers: Where’s Your Email Monitoring Policy?!?
A recent California appellate court case reinforces the need for employers to have a clear and enforceable policy regarding the ability to review employees’ work emails. In Militello v. VFARM 1509 [1], the plaintiff, Shauneen Militello, sued several fellow co-owners of a cannabis manufacturing and distribution company. One of the defendants, Ann...
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