Stember, Cohn & Davidson-Welling, LLC, won a jury verdict approaching $900,000 in an age discrimination and FMLA case. Over a career spanning almost 30 years, Walter Mikulan had worked his way up through the ranks from corrections officer to Major when Allegheny County Jail Warden Orlando Harper fired him. The jury found that Harper terminated […]
Stember Cohn & Davidson-Welling (“SCDW”) has reached a class action settlement with the Meadows Casino in Washington, PA, on behalf of table games dealers at the Casino in Yanchak v. Cannery Casino Resorts, LLC., a wage and hour case brought under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act. A former dealer […]
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reinstated the gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit of Stember Cohn & Davidson-Welling client Sandra Connelly, finding that the lower court improperly dismissed Ms. Connelly’s claims. Ms. Connelly was the only female truck driver employed by Lane Construction Corporation at its Pittsburgh facility. She contends that she […]
In a clear victory for Pennsylvania employees, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently held in a case of first impression that an employer cannot use so called “magic language” to impose noncompete clauses where no significant benefit is provided to the agreeing employee. The continuation of employment on its own, the court found, is not […]
President Obama on Labor Day signed an executive order which requires companies that contract with the federal government to provide their workers with paid sick leave. The order, titled “Establishing Paid Sick Leave for Federal Contractors,” seeks to ensure that employees of companies which contract with the federal government are eligible for paid sick leave, […]
Filing for long-term disability (LTD) benefits is more complicated than your LTD insurance company might like you to think. If you become unable to work and are covered by LTD insurance, consulting with an LTD lawyer could make the difference between getting benefits and having your claim denied. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act […]
The U.S. Department of Labor recently announced the recovery of $4.5M in unpaid overtime for thousands of Marcellus Shale natural gas workers Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The DOL’s investigation revealed significant violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which resulted in employers agreeing to pay $4,409,547 in back wages to 5,310 employees. An official […]
Last week Pennsylvania joined 18 other states (including its eight neighbors in the Northeastern United States) that recognize gay and lesbian couples’ right to marry. In Whitewood v. Wolf, federal judge John Jones III invalidated a 1996 Pennsylvania statute defining marriage as “[a] civil contract by which one man and one woman take each other […]
On March 13, 2014, President Barack Obama issued a memorandum to the Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez, directing him to research and “propose revisions to modernize and streamline the existing overtime regulations.” Despite the news coverage of this memo, it was neither an executive order nor some other new law or regulation. Rather, it is […]
Earlier this month in Lawson v. FMR LLC, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (“SOX”) protects employees of private companies who blow the whistle on wrongdoing at publicly held companies. This means that if your employer does work for a publicly held company and you report that company for fraudulent accounting practices […]