BarSpace, a new iPhone app and website, is installing cameras in bars and nightclubs across the San Francisco Bay Area and then transmitting the video for the public to see. CEO Mike Deignan says the product allows users to determine whether a bar is busy, who’s on staff, and what the dress code is, helping them decide where to go for a night out. This may be the case, but is streaming live video without patron consent illegal?...
There are many stories of former employees suing their employers, claiming they were fired after failing a lie detector test at work. And employers are dragged into costly litigation due to these claims. In light of these lawsuits, business owners may be wondering about the legality of administering lie detector tests such as polygraphs at work. It turns out that under certain circumstances, employee polygraph tests can be legal, but there are limitations on how they can be used....
The arraignment of an Irving, Texas mother on a single charge of murder in the death of her five year-old son took place on July 21. Court officials cancelled the scheduled second hearing on the death of Saiqa Akhter’s 2-year-old daughter, Faryaal, who died Tuesday evening, a day after she was revived and placed on life support. The Dallas Morning News reports that Saiqa Akhter called 911 and told the dispatcher that she had killed her children because they were “not normal....
Yesterday French workers at a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard released five of their bosses, whom they had sequestered for 10 hours in a standoff negotiation over jobs. Though American workers rarely adopt such radical tactics when their jobs are threatened, lately many employees, and their bosses wonder if, when and how employers must warn employees of impending layoffs. The LA Times reported that the French hostage situation at FM Logistic ended peacefully....
The NLRB’s new “Employee Rights” poster is on hold, after a federal court in Washington, D.C., issued a temporary injunction Tuesday. The NLRB may not have the power to require such a poster, the court opined. As this blog reported last fall, the National Labor Relations Board was set to require most private employers display 11-by-17-inch posters about union activity in the workplace. The NLRB’s poster rule was set to take effect nationwide April 30, the Associated Press reports....
Just six short months ago, U.S. District Judge Clay Land blasted plaintiffs’ attorneys in vaginal mesh lawsuits for, as he put it, filing cases “that probably should never have been brought in the first place.” Land specifically called out lawyers piggybacking on litigation against Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary Mentor Corporation, makers of ObTape, and filing claims late: “Similarly, if you did not file the action until eight years after your client’s doctor excised the Obtape and informed your client that it was causing her problems, you may face a serious challenge showing cause as to why sanctions should not be imposed....
We all know to call 911 in an emergency. But some of us may be hard of hearing or speech impaired, and some emergencies don’t allow for a safe phone call conversation with police dispatchers. So this week, Los Angeles County rolled out its “Text-to-911” service, giving Burbank, Glendale, Long Beach, and Los Angeles residents the ability to text 911 in the case of an emergency. But texting 911 is not meant to entirely replace calling 911 as the primary contact for emergency services, and there are some caveats to texting 911....
Students might just have a lot more to thank Al Franken for than the years of laughs on Saturday Night Live. Senator Franken, along with fellow Democratic Senators Richard Durbin of Illinois, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, have reportedly introduced a bill that will make it far more possible for borrowers to discharge private student loans in bankruptcy, which have been generally shielded from bankruptcy discharge since 2005. Thanks to a provision the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act signed into law by then President George W....
Have you ever tried to sit with a group of business people, only to realize that you have no clue what they’re talking about? And you know it’s not because you don’t have business savvy. Rather, you are out of the loop because they are throwing around oddball phrases and acronyms that make no sense whatsoever. In fact, some of the slang sounds downright weird. We recently found ahilarious list of the forty-five most annoying business phrases....
While same-sex couples can now legally marry in every state, LGBT people still face discrimination in many other areas of life. LGBT people face employment discrimination everyday, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are five tips to prevent LGBT employment discrimination and avoid lawsuits: An essential first step is to have a clear and up to date non-discrimination policy. Outline what kind of discriminatory behavior is unacceptable and describe what steps will be taken to address violations....
Americans strongly oppose allowing bosses to obtain their employees’ social media passwords, a new FindLaw.com survey reveals. Many employers may be drawn to the idea of requiring workers to divulge their social media passwords as a condition of employment. But the overwhelming majority of workers don’t think it’s a good idea, according FindLaw’s survey of 1,000 Americans (with a margin of error of 3 percent). Here are a few of the FindLaw survey’s key points:...
There’s no denying companies need a way to keep track of and deter excessive absenteeism by their employees. After all, they have businesses to run and they rely on their employees to get the job done. But they should probably differentiate between someone who’s absent because they were doing keg stands the night before, and someone who’s absent because they’re growing a human inside their body. According to a federal lawsuit filed by two women, they were fired for their pregnancy-related absences....
You wouldn’t expect a bicycle accident to be deadly. But they can be. Just consider San Francisco, where two people have been killed by a bicyclist in the last year. In the latest of these incidents, the bicyclist, Chris Bucchere, went careening down a steep hill and crashed into a crowded crosswalk. He hit 71-year-old Sutchi Hui, who died four days later. Even if prosecutors decide not to charge Bucchere with vehicular manslaughter, he’ll likely be saddled with a bicycle accident lawsuit....
Pot entrepreneurs nationwide have been cheering recent victories, with more and more states legalizing recreational and medical marijuana. But relaxed weed regulations don’t always mean an open market on advertising. State and federal law may limit the kind of ads marijuana businesses can run, and whom they may target. One dicey area is highway pot ads and billboards, and California lawmakers are trying to constrict cannabiz coverage along their inter- and intrastate highways....
Once you’ve settled the big spousal support questions concerning how much you’ll be paid and how long the payments will last, you may wonder if those payments can be applied to all the time you spent trying to figure it out in the first place. A battle over divorce, custody, or paternity can take weeks, months, or even years. So, can spousal support be applied to all of that time?...
Beware Messy Marvins, you can be evicted for keeping an unkempt apartment. But before scrambling to pick up your dirty clothes in fear of losing that fantastic rent-controlled apartment, let’s take a deeper look into this matter. There’s messy, and then there’s filthy, and the difference between the two depends on more than just your landlord’s attitude. Landlord-tenant relationships are governed by local laws and rental agreements. Almost all rentals agreements have a provision requiring renters to refrain from creating a situation which interferes with the health, safety, or enjoyment of the landlord or other tenants in the building....
Biometrics has been all the rage the last few years, offering a good way to ditch your “Password1” password for something uniquely identifiable and entirely yours. Businesses have increasingly adopted biometrics to replace tickets, employee ID badges, time clocks, and customers struggling to remember a password before purchasing a product. So what’s the catch? Recently, there’s been a rise in class action lawsuits alleging companies are misusing biometric data belonging to patrons, employees, and more....
Asylum is a form of humanitarian relief available to people who face persecution in their home countries based on specific criteria. Although affirmative asylum applications must be filed within one year of arrival in the United States, changed circumstances are an exception to the general rule. A person may leave home and experience changes in their personal circumstances that make it impossible to safely return, or conditions in a country may transform, becoming dangerous....
In a lawsuit filed last week in the District Court of the Cherokee Nation, located within the state of Oklahoma, the tribe’s attorney general is alleging Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens, along with 3 major prescription drug distributors, have caused great harm to the Cherokee Nation. The lawsuit claims the defendants failed in their duties to properly monitor the distribution of certain prescription drugs that are considered federal controlled substances, and that the failure to monitor the distribution has led to a drug epidemic....
Corporate espionage is not just a plot device that moves along the plot of James Bond movies, it’s also a real thing that actually happens, allegedly at least. A recent class action lawsuit, filed by a ride share driver is alleging that Uber used a top secret spyware program called “Hell” to track Uber drivers that were also driving for their competitor Lyft in order to offer incentives to those drivers to spend more time on Uber than Lyft....
