The Employment Law Reporter

Here is what we cover in this issue of The Employment Law Reporter:

• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has issued an important decision in a case that presented the question of what a plaintiff asserting employment discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 must allege to plead the existence of an employer-employee relationship pursuant to the “joint employer” doctrine.
• A federal court in New York has concluded that a plaintiff’s employment discrimination claims should be dismissed because she had not filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before she filed her lawsuit.
• The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has dismissed an employment discrimination complaint alleging that the plaintiff was wrongfully terminated. The court found that the plaintiff’s complaint did not allege facts showing that the defendants’ actions were based on any federally protected characteristics and that the plaintiff did not identify his race or any other characteristics that were protected under federal law.
• The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has dismissed a plaintiff’s claims for employment discrimination and hostile work environment against his former employer, ruling that the plaintiff failed to allege facts that would support his claims.
• The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York has dismissed a plaintiff’s employment discrimination action against her former employer and a number of individual defendants after finding that she had not alleged discrimination on the basis of a protected status, such as race, color, gender, religion, national origin, age or disability.
• A federal district court in New York has stayed a plaintiff’s employment discrimination lawsuit so that her claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and under 42 U.S.C. § 1981 could be arbitrated, as provided in a collective bargaining agreement that covered the plaintiff.
• An appellate court in New York has reversed a trial court’s decision to dismiss a plaintiff’s lawsuit against her former employer in favor of arbitration, finding that the plaintiff’s employment agreement did not “expressly and unequivocally establish” that the parties had agreed to arbitrate the plaintiff’s claims for wrongful termination and unpaid commissions.
• A trial court in New York has granted a preliminary injunction enjoining defendants from accessing certain of the plaintiff’s confidential information allegedly in the defendants’ possession and enjoining the defendants from soliciting certain identified customers of the plaintiff.
• The Supreme Court, New York County, has granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit asserting that it interfered with an employment agreement by hiring the plaintiff’s employee.

Kenneth A. Novikoff