THE POLIQUIN FIRM - PRACTICE AREAS
Employment Law
Wage & Hour Overtime Claims
With some exceptions, if you work overtime, you’re entitled to overtime pay. employees must be especially vigilant regarding your rights as to overtime wages and the denial of minimum wage. In addition, almost all employees are entitled to a minimum wage. Read more...
Disability Discrimination
Disability discrimination is wrong and illegal. Both the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Delaware Discrimination Employment Act (DDEA) protect employees and applicants with disabilities from discrimination in employment. An employer may not discriminate in hiring, firing, promotions, benefits, training, or any other aspect of employment. Read more...
Hostile Work Environment
A hostile work environment requires that the offensive conduct creates an atmosphere so bad that a reasonable person would find it abusive and hostile and the actual victim subjectively finds abusive and hostile. Perhaps, most importantly, the harassment must be based on a protect class (race, gender/sex, disability, religion, age). Read more...
Retaliation
Similar to discrimination claims, all retaliation complaints are unique and must be carefully analyzed to know what steps to take. Be sure to document and keep a record of all relevant documents and complaints. Often if it isn’t written down contemporaneously, it is easy for an employer to deny it existed. Read more...
Defamation
Defamation is a communication that tends to injure a person's "reputation" in the ordinary sense of that word; that is, some statement or action that diminishes the esteem, respect, goodwill, or confidence in which the person is held and tends to cause bad feelings or opinions about the person. Libel is written defamation. Slander is oral defamation. Read more...
Wrongful Termination
Generally, Delaware is an at-will employment state where employees can be terminated for a good reason, a bad reason, or no reason at all. However, an employee cannot get terminated for an illegal reason. Read more...
Whistleblower
Federal and state whistleblower laws protect employees from retaliatory firing if they report an employer’s allegedly illegal activities to the appropriate
state or federal agency. Qui tam lawsuits are whistleblower lawsuits brought pursuant to the False Claims Act. Read more...
Civil Rights Law
Civil Rights Violations
A civil right is an enforceable right or privilege, which if interfered with by another, gives rise to an action for injury. Examples of 1983 Civil Rights Violations include: Unlawful Arrest and/or Seizure, Excessive Force/Police Brutality, Deliberate Indifference to Medical Needs, False Imprisonment, Malicious Prosecution and Suppression of Speech. Read more...
Family Law
Protection from Abuse
A protective order is a legal order issued by a state court which requires one person to stop harming another. The order can also place other restrictions on the abuser, such as ordering him/her to stay away from you or stop contacting you. In Delaware, there are protective orders based on family violence and based on sexual assault or abuse, stalking, or trafficking. Read more...
Accident Law
Personal Injury
Personal injury and auto accident cases involve a private plaintiff seeking compensation (money) for the harm caused by the defendant's actions. Most of the time, a plaintiff’s damages will be paid for by car insurance. A personal injury usually must demonstrate that the defendant was negligent in some way and that negligence causes the injuries suffered by the plaintiff. Read more...
Wrongful Death
A wrongful death claim is analogous to a personal injury claim in that in order to hold the defendant liable in a wrongful death claim, the plaintiffs in the claim (through the estate of the victim) must meet the same burden of proof that the victim would have had to meet had the victim lived. Read more...
