Case Summaries

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Employers often consider asserting counterclaims against employees who file lawsuits against them.  Most lawyers representing employers counsel against filing counterclaims except in exceptional cases (e.g., an employee’s theft of trade secrets or breach of a covenant not to compete). However, where an employer pays an employee valuable severance benefits in return for a release…

The Fort Worth Court of Appeals ruled that the provisions of the federal Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 extending the charge filing deadlines for certain pay discrimination claims should not be automatically applied to pay discrimination claims arising under state law.

In Tarrant Regional Water District v. Villanueva, Tamara Villanueva brought suit against the…

The Fifth Circuit issued an important opinion on an issue (i.e., judicial estoppel) that arises frequently when litigating employment disputes.  The issue is whether an innocent bankruptcy trustee is judicially estopped from collecting assets, on behalf of the creditors, that were not disclosed by the debtor in his bankruptcy filings.  The court of appeals held that, like…

In another cable splicer misclassification case arising in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, the Fifth Circuit affirmed a trial court decision that Louis Thibault was an independent contractor rather than an employee. Therefore, he was not entitled to overtime under the FLSA.

Thibault owned a business in his home state of Delaware selling picnic tables, storage…

The exercise of sound judgment and the uniform, mechanical application of employment policies are not always synonymous. Every FMLA-covered employer in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana should be interested in the Fifth Circuit’s most recent FMLA case resulting from an employer’s uniform application of its internal FMLA reporting policy. In Saenz v. Harlington Medical Center, the Court…

I’ve previously written about the specific requirements that must be included in a covenant not to compete with a licensed physician to make the restrictive covenant enforceable.  The Dallas Court of Appeals recently affirmed a trial court’s decision that a noncompetition agreement between a surgical practice and several limited-partner physicians was unenforceable because the agreement lacked one of the statutorily required…

In its first FMLA opinion, the Texas Supreme Court held that agencies of the State of Texas cannot be sued for FMLA violations arising out of an employee’s FMLA leave taken for his own serious health condition.   In University of Texas at El Paso v. Herrera, the Supreme Court of Texas held that, unlike the family care provisions of…

Texas courts routinely enforce arbitration agreements between employers and their employees. In most parts of the state, lawyers representing employees agree to go to arbitration upon being presented with a copy of an arbitration agreement signed by the plaintiff-employee. On occasion, however, there are disputes over the enforceability of an arbitration agreement. The Supreme Court…

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that an employer willfully violated the FLSA by excluding “per diem” from the employee’s regular rate of pay and thereby avoiding increased overtime wages. In Gagnon v. United Technisource, Inc., the employer separated the plaintiff’s compensation into straight time, an hourly per diem payable up to the…