A Mercedes-Benz USA LLP veteran employee has dismissed his proposed class action lawsuit against his employer without prejudice. James Click, who has worked for Mercedes-Benz since 1996, filed suit against the company for failing to pay workers overtime pay after its Kronos payroll system fell victim to a ransomware attack in December 2021. Click gave no indication why he was dismissing his claims in his notice of Read More

A Georgia federal district court granted partial summary judgment in favor of an insurer for a Georgia chicken processing plant where six workers died due to a liquid nitrogen leak. The case is Foundation Food Group Inc. et al. v. Selective Way Insurance Co., case number 2:21-cv-00207, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The court ruled that the plant owners, Foundation Food Group Inc., and Read More

A federal district court judge will allow a former fire chief to pursue wrongful termination claims against a Georgia city. The claims allege that the city violated the former employee’s First Amendment rights and state whistleblower laws. The judge dismissed various other claims pursuant to the city’s motion to dismiss. The case is Owens v. Propes et al., case number 3:21-cv-00084, U.S. District Court for the Middle Read More

A same-sex male couple recently filed a class discrimination charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the city of New York for refusing in vitro fertilization (IVF) benefits offered to other city workers. The couple alleges that the city violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and state and local civil rights laws when it denied these benefits to Corey Briskin, a former city Read More

A California appellate court has upheld the decision of a trial court to deny Uber’s petition to compel arbitration in a case involving the worker misclassification of a former Uber Eats driver. According to the court, an agreement that the driver signed waiving the right to bring a claim under California's Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), is unenforceable, since such claims belong to the state, not to the Read More

Maryland has become the tenth state, in addition to the District of Columbia, to enact a paid family and medical leave insurance program. The Maryland Department of Labor must establish regulations for implementing the Time to Care Act of 2022, no later than June 1, 2023. After the state legislature passed the bill to create this program, Governor Larry Hogan vetoed it. The state legislature voted to override Read More

A federal district court has vacated the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) withdrawal of regulations outlining when a worker is an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In Coalition for Workforce Innovation v. Walsh, No. 1:21-cv-00130-MAC (E.D. Tex. Mar. 14, 2022), the court concluded that the DOL’s initial delay and later withdrawal of the regulations did not meet federal administrative Read More