litigation Archives - The Poliquin Firm

Important Alert to All Former and Current Connections Employees

Ron Poliquin — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 18:48:19 +0000

The Poliquin firm is currently investigating claims of current or former employees of Connections.

My name is Ron Poliquin of DoverLawOffice.com. These claims include, but are not limited to, whistleblower complaints, discrimination complaints, retaliation claims, unpaid overtime claims, wrongful termination and hostile work environment claims.

On May 10, 2019, the Wilmington News Journal published a blockbuster article reporting that Connections employees at their Crest South location were being directed to falsify patient records at the direction of their supervisor. I have represented many former connections employees and will help navigate you in any potential litigation. These cases that I’ve represented Connections employees in are discrimination, unpaid overtime, and retaliation.

All consultations are free and confidential for former or current Connections employees. Connections is the largest and most powerful state-funded treatment provider in the state, but no organization is above the law. We can do this together! But don’t wait, because there are strict statutes of limitations. There are specific guidelines on how to report discrimination or how to report certain whistleblower allegations.

I will protect you and we will protect you together. You need to call my office immediately and schedule an appointment. If you’re a current or former Connections employee, remember that you need an experienced employment attorney to help guide you through this process.

Thanks for watching,

Ron Poliquin, DoverLawOffice.com

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Is It Discrimination For a Female Teacher To Be Terminated Over a Topless Photo?

Ron Poliquin — Tue, 21 May 2019 19:01:37 +0000

Ron Poliquin, DoverLawOffice.com,

Today’s question, “Is it discrimination for a female teacher to be terminated over a topless photo that was found by a student?” That is what plaintiff Lauren Miranda is claiming. Miranda was fired after a teenage student ended up with a topless selfie of this public-school math teacher, but Miranda did not send the photo to the student. She sent it to another male teacher in the district that she recently had a relationship.

Apparently, the photo was passed around and somehow wound up in the student’s hands. Miranda is suing the school district, superintendent, and other administrators on the basis of gender discrimination, seeking $3 million dollars and to be reinstated at the school.

What she and her legal counsel are arguing, in a sense, is that if the nipples in the photo had belonged to a male teacher, if it was a topless photo of a male teacher, no action would have been taken. In fact, Miranda noted that there are male teachers on Facebook that have topless photos that are easily accessible on social media platforms and never to her knowledge has that been reprimanded let alone fired.

To me, Miranda is focused on the nipples and topless photo. I would ask her some questions as far as to see if this is, in fact, gender discrimination. How has the school handled prior cases of pictures of teachers? How did the picture get into the hands of the student? Did the school do any kind of investigation? A question we have to ask is this topless photo sexual in nature? I think it would be a more clear-cut case if it was a pornographic picture of someone having sex, but here you are talking about simply a topless photo.

It is a very difficult case; I think there is a good argument to make that a topless photo in and of itself does not make you a bad role model. It is not sexual in nature. I also think it obviously helps that she did not pass out the photo, it was passed on by someone else.

If I were a betting man, I would bet that the court would defer to the school, but I would still represent Miranda because I think it is a worthwhile cause to proceed with. What is obvious here is in this day and age with everyone’s private lives not being so private and being on the internet, employers are going to have to make some big adjustments to make sure men and women are treated equally in the workplace. Especially when it comes to issues like this.

If you feel like you have been discriminated against because of your gender, please contact DoverLawOffice.com or contact a qualified employment attorney. Thank you!

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First Year Lawyer Wins Tax Victory In Chancery Court

Ron Poliquin — Fri, 03 May 2019 14:10:15 +0000

Author: Jennifer Batchelor
Issue Date: 2005-02-23
Source: Delaware Law Weekly

When first-year attorney Ronald Poliquin sat down for a hearing before Chancellor William B. Chandler III, he was flanked only by his clients: two New Castle County residents who objected to the way the county government was handling taxpayers’ money. New Castle County, on the other hand, had called in the troops, and a bevy of lawyers from Saul Ewing filed into the courtroom.

The matter of the day was a preliminary hearing in Korn v. New Castle County, a case in which the Court of Chancery ultimately ruled that the county had adopted an invalid FY 2005 budget, and had exceeded its statutory authority by holding a surplus of approximately $206 million in its coffers.

A 2004 Widener University School of Law graduate, Poliquin represents Richard J. Korn and Andrew Dal Nogare. Korn, who made an unsuccessful bid for New Castle County executive last year, selected Poliquin to handle the litigation by default, the 27-year-old attorney said.

“Richard Korn had been looking throughout Delaware for an attorney to [take the case] and he couldn’t find one,” Poliquin said. “He came to me and I was sympathetic to the cause and I figured there was nothing to lose.”

According to Chandler’s Feb. 10 opinion in the matter, Korn and Dal Nogare alleged that New Castle County and various members of its government had acted illegally by accumulating unauthorized reserves within the county’s general and sewer funds.

Chandler agreed with the plaintiffs.

The chancellor determined that while the New Castle County Code permits the county to retain revenues in excess of its expenses during a fiscal year, the reserves must be equal to 20 percent of the respective funds in which they are held. New Castle County’s reserves had exceeded its FY 2005 general and sewer funds by more than 100 percent, the opinion stated.

Because the county had adopted an invalid budget and retained unauthorized reserves, Chandler declared that: 1) the New Castle County executive and council members may not make appropriations beyond a given fiscal year, unless those appropriations are encumbered; 2) the New Castle County executive cannot create off-budget reserve accounts other than those within the general and sewer funds, and 3) the county’s reserves cannot exceed 20 percent of the total estimated revenue of a given fund for a given fiscal year.

The court noted that any deviation from the 20 percent could be appropriated to the reserves either by legislative action or by altering the permitted appropriation for the fiscal year. Altering an appropriation would require a supermajority vote of the 13-member county council, the opinion said.

In addition to issuing the three declaratory judgments, the court denied the plaintiffs’ request to permanently enjoin an $80 million bond sale that county council had approved for FY 2005. The county wished to issue the bonds in order to fund certain capital projects, rather than tapping into its reserves to do so, the opinion said.

Chandler denied the injunction because the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate that they faced irreparable harm — a showing necessary for obtaining a permanent injunction. Further, the chancellor said he doubted that the county would pursue a bond sale because he had deemed the budget on which it was based illegal.

In addition to the county itself, County Executive Christopher A. Coons, the entire county council and other officials were named as defendants in the action. Though the plaintiffs’ complaint was actually lodged against former county executive Thomas Gordon and other past officials, the recently elected Coons, and the current county government are still operating under their predecessors’ erroneous policies, the opinion said.

“It is left, therefore, to the new stewards of New Castle County to give effect to this decision and to put right the errors they have inherited,” Chandler wrote.

Poliquin said the county has proposed an ordinance that would permit the county to maintain its current reserves in off-budget accounts. Coons said only that the county is considering an ordinance that would “rectify the situation.”

When asked whether he had received assistance from more senior attorneys at his firm, Young Malmberg & Howard in Dover, Poliquin said that he had sought their counsel, but that the matter was his, and he ran with it. Thus far, handling Korn has proved a great experience, the freshly minted lawyer said.

Poliquin said the plaintiffs would like to see some of the excess funds returned to taxpayers, but that he does not believe the county plans to do so at this time. The plaintiffs are simply waiting to see what the county’s next move will be, he stated.

Should the plaintiffs disagree with the county’s plans, they will again look to the court, Poliquin said.

Download the full PDF article here

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Who wants to be a Whistleblower Multimillionaire?

Ron Poliquin — Wed, 01 May 2019 23:04:51 +0000

Ron Poliquin, doverlawoffice.com.

A question we're talking about today is who wants to be a whistleblower multimillionaire? A whistleblower multimillionaire. And how do you become a millionaire the easy way? Traditionally you could go through game shows, reality TV, the lottery, maybe go to the casino. Now there's another way.

Blow the whistle on a federal or state agency committing fraud pursuant to either the Federal False Claims Act or the State False Claims Act, or a whistleblower act.

That's exactly what happened when a Duke University lab analyst sued the University of Duke University on behalf of the federal government showing Duke fudged data to help the university win and keep lucrative grants from the National Institute of Health and in the EPA. Duke settled the case by paying $112.5 million dollars to the US government, but guess what that lab analyst received? He received $33.75 million dollars for his trouble. So if you happen to know of any fraud going on with either federal grants, perhaps in one of our fine universities here in Delaware, or going on with fraud in money in state or federal government, contact my office, and we'll investigate the claims and guide you through the process. And you may just become a multimillionaire for your troubles. This is Ron Poliquin, doverlawoffice.com. Because remember, if you don't stand up for your rights, who else will?

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The Costs of Litigation

Ron Poliquin — Wed, 16 Jan 2019 22:00:11 +0000

The Costs of Litigation

Ron Poliquin, DoverLawOffice.com,

I’m here to talk to you about the cost of litigation and the decision to settle a case or take a case of trial. Now as an attorney and every attorney has heard this, you hear it sometimes, they say it's about the principle and in the real-world principle costs money. Anytime a client usually comes in my office, they've been usually wronged in some way and you want the other side to pay and restore you to where you were prior to the wrong. But in making this decision you have to decide how much that will actually cost you because you want the other side to pay, but you're going to have to also pay. That's why we're going to go through it today.

The old saying for attorneys is, be careful of a client that comes in and says, "I don't care how much it costs", because that client never had any intention of paying you in the first place. The truth is most people don't have the funds to litigate a case 100% or to the death. I like to use an example here to explain to you something. You know, there's the famous Hulk Hogan vs. Gawker lawsuit which was an invasion of privacy lawsuit. Which eventually lead to Gawker’s demise. Gawker was a website that essentially published tabloid type information from the private lives of public people.

What people might not know is that lawsuit was actually secretly funded by PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel. Now Peter Thiel hated Gawker because he saw them as a website that ruins people’s lives for no good reason. They had published unflattering stories about him, so he secretly funded a team of lawyers to find and help victims of Gawker's coverage of them to mount cases against Gawker. Now most people don't have a Peter Thiel so therefore the settlement of the lawsuit might be in their best interest. The timing of that settlement is going to depend on various factors.

I just made up a little list here regarding the cost of litigation, some expenses that you're going to see here:

Filing fees - it could range from $45 in Justice of the Peace Court to $400 filing fee in U.S. District Court.
Request of records - a lot of times you are going to need to order medical records or other records. Sometime that goes about 50 cents a page but that's going to vary.
The cost of depositions - that's when you ask questions to the other side or they ask questions of your party under oath with the court reporter. Sometimes it's recorded audio or visual, that's going to run from $200 to $900 each.
Expert fees - in some cases where there's going to be some kind of allegation of negligence, you're going to have to have an expert. Or a lot of times in personal injury cases I find that it is about $3000 review the actual case, $3000 to write an expert report and it could be $8500 for trial testimonial. That is just an example of a recent case I had where that was the listing of this doctors fee agreement.
Private Investigation - If you need a private investigator to sometimes interview people, sometimes to serve people or sometimes to look up information that could cost you $75 an hour.
Attorney Fees - I find in this area a new attorney is going to be $250 an hour, a more experienced attorney can go up to $500 an hour in Delaware. Sometimes cases can be higher. Those are real cost, who pays for these costs? Almost anytime the client is going to pay the cost. Meaning it didn’t matter if it's going to be a contingency fee or an hourly fee. Contingency fee is win are you don't pay that attorney until the very end. They don't get paid until there's a settlement or there's a there some kind of trial and judgment versus hourly fee were paying hourly but the client almost always pays the costs. Where in some cases an attorney may advance the cost, meaning paying them up front and you pay him later on. Or in some cases the client pays the cost as they come in.

So, these are costs that are going to come out of you. Obviously, the earlier you settle the case, or resolve the case, the less costs there are going to be. You have to talk to your attorney about how much would the cost be for this case and will you end up getting less because of all the costs you paid in a case if it goes forward. There is also consideration for settlement because of cost of time versus any uncertainty when you go to trial. No matter what court you are in, whether it's Justice of the Peace Court, Family Court, Chancery Court, you're rolling the dice if you let a judge decide. Meaning that you're taking it out the hands of the two parties. Where if you settle a case, you're not going to get everything you want, but you're going to get something versus the uncertainty of letting a judge make a decision or a jury make a decision.

Ronald Reagan once said, “I rather get 80% of what I want rather than go over the cliff with my flag flying.” If somehow in settlement you're getting a lot of what you want, I would recommend that client accept the settlement rather than taking a risk further on an having more court cost to come forward with attorney’s fees. I had a recent Family Court case where I fully expected this case to go to a hearing. We had prepared to go to a hearing and I was prepared to go to the hearing. We had cost of depositions, we had other various costs, I'd put a lot of time in and the case got settled right before trial. The reason why it got settled is because my client got 80% of what they wanted. So yeah, they could've taken a risk and go to trial and got more perhaps, or they could get the risk of taking less. So, I recommended in that case for that person to take the 80% and not take the risk. I always say the best way to get a good settlement is litigate the case like it's going to trial. It's best to be prepared to go to trial and settle the case then just trying to settle a case and not being prepared to go to trial. I think that's the worst position you could be in.

This is Ron Poliquin, DoverLawOffice.com. You have an obligation to yourself to know your rights and your options to make the best decision for you. I don't decide for my client to go to trial or settle, they make this decision themselves based on the best information I have and the options they have. Thank you!

Give me a call today if you'd like to discuss your case.

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