Monthly Archives: November 2010

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), Fourth Circuit, Interest, Liquidated damages, Result for Employee

Back from the USSR: FMLA Retaliation, 4th Circuit Decision in Dotson v Pfizer

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Retal­i­a­tion law is one of the most devel­op­ing (and dan­ger­ous) areas of employ­ment law. I recent­ly spoke at the West Vir­ginia Employ­ment Lawyers Association’s annu­al con­fer­ence on retal­i­a­tion law, and I want­ed to go back and dis­cuss an impor­tant Fourth Cir­cuit deci­sion on the Fam­i­ly and Med­ical Leave Act of 1993, 29 U.S.C. § 2601 et seq.

Dotson v. Pfizer: Adoption and the FMLA

The deci­sion is Dot­son v. Pfiz­er Inc., 558 F.3d 284 (2009), and involved alle­ga­tions of retal­i­a­tion stem­ming from leave tak­en for an inter­na­tion­al adop­tion from Russia.

The jury award­ed $1,876 in dam­ages on the FMLA inter­fer­ence claim and $331,429.25 on FMLA retal­i­a­tion claim. The judge then award­ed $333,305.25 in statu­to­ry liq­ui­dat­ed dam­ages, $375,000 in attor­neys’ fees, and $14,264.88 in court costs. Both sides appealed. The Fourth Cir­cuit reject­ed all aspects of the employer’s appeal, but found the tri­al court made a mis­take in refus­ing to award the plain­tiff pre-judg­ment interest.

Con­tin­ue read­ing Back from the USSR: FMLA Retal­i­a­tion, 4th Cir­cuit Deci­sion in Dot­son v Pfiz­er →
Democracy, Vacancies

Special Election for Senator Byrd’s Seat, and “Democracy in America” From Northern Exposure TV Series

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Today is the Spe­cial Unit­ed States Sen­ate Pri­ma­ry Elec­tion for Sen­a­tor Byrd’s seat in West Vir­ginia.

With Democ­ra­cy on my mind: Below is a video seg­ment of the “Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca” episode of North­ern Expo­sure. When you click the play but­ton below, you might get a copy­right mes­sage so that you have to get redi­rect­ed to the actu­al YouTube site (on which this seg­ment is available).

This episode of North­ern Expo­sure was a won­der­ful (and mov­ing) glimpse of democ­ra­cy in small town Amer­i­cana, cen­ter­ing around the may­oral elec­tion for the fic­tion­al Cice­ly, Alas­ka. There are a num­ber of oth­er seg­ments from that episode on YouTube. If you have some free time, get on YouTube and type “North­ern Expo­sure democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca” to see some of the oth­er clips. Or buy the DVD of sea­son three of North­ern Expo­sure, which con­tains the Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca episode. While you’re at it, for anoth­er won­der­ful glimpse of small town Amer­i­cana, watch the always fan­tas­tic Robert Pre­ston in The Music Man.

Update (2015): It looks like the video linked above has been blocked on copy­right grounds, so here is the Ama­zon link to buy sea­son three of North­ern Expo­sure, which includ­ed the “Democ­ra­cy in Amer­i­ca” episode.