delaware employment attorney Archives - The Poliquin Firm

COVID Employee Alert

Katherine Thomas — Sat, 04 Jul 2020 10:18:00 +0000

Ron Poliquin, DoverLawOffice.com,

This is a COVID employee alert on unpaid wages and overtime. There has been an uptick, extreme uptick, in the number of unpaid wage claims since the pandemic. There are many employers out there who are closed for various reasons, who are expecting employees to go weeks and sometimes months without pay and using the pandemic as an excuse.

This is not only wrong; it is illegal, and employees have remedies to solve these problems. Employees should not be expected to work without pay or work beyond 40-hours a week without getting paid overtime pay. The government has put in place many programs for businesses such as the Paycheck Protection Program to help employers get through this trying time. That does not mean that employees need to be sacrificing their pay for employers.

Another thing that has happened is that employers are asking employees to switch from salary to hourly. Now the whole point of going from hourly to salary is that you don’t have to work 40-hours a week. You are basically paid for your time and they are not keeping hours. But, because of the pandemic there are some employers who are asking or unilaterally switching employees pay from salary to hourly, so be careful of that. Don’t be a sucker, don’t let emotions, don’t let employers manipulate you.

There are many employees who are sacrificing their pay, their time with their family because they believe that they owe some loyalty to these employers or their boss. It is great to have loyalty but one of the principles of this country is that you should get paid for what you do and paid for your work. So, make sure you are getting paid if you have any issues you come see me, Ron Poliquin DoverLawOffice.com, or see an otherwise qualified employment attorney and make sure you assert your rights. Be you own best advocate.

Thank you!

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Sexual Orientation Discrimination

Ron Poliquin — Thu, 21 Nov 2019 19:24:11 +0000

Does Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, does that include sexual orientation and gender identity? That is the issue coming up before our U.S. Supreme Court in three different cases.

The first case includes a funeral director who was fired after telling her employer that she was transitioning from a male to a female.

In the second case, a county employee was fired after his employer found out he was gay after it was discovered due to his participation in an LGBTQ softball league.

The third case is about a male skydiving instructor who lost his job after trying to reassure a female client that she didn’t need to worry about a tandem skydive with the instructor because he was gay.

Now it’s important to remember that under Delaware state law you are protected based on gender identity or sexual orientation. So, in Delaware even though we don’t know whether or not you are protected under federal law, we do know you are protected, and you’re entitled to sue under state law.

Previously we had employment attorneys representing plaintiffs’ employees. I’ve gotten around this somewhat because you can sue under Title 7 on sexual stereotypes. For instance, in the Price Waterhouse case and Hopkins, the employee was allegedly denied partnership because she did not fit the firm’s image of a proper woman. According to some partners, she was too masculine or not too feminine enough. The Supreme Court ruled that she had made out a claim under Title 7 because it was based on disparate treatment of men and women resulting from sexual stereotypes.

So, there were times when I filed claims on behalf of homosexuals, gays, and lesbians because they did not fit sexual stereotypes. But this is different in front of the Supreme Court now. This will decide once and for all, hopefully, whether or not you can discriminate under Title 7 based on gender identity or sexual orientation. In each of these cases, the lower courts received inconsistent conclusions.

Either way, there are protections currently under Delaware law and some protection under federal law for individuals that get discriminated against on based sexual orientation or gender identity.

If questions or have been discriminated on based on this or any other protected actions or need any questions answered, please come visit me Ron Poliquin DoverLawOffice.com

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Take This Job and Shove it…Or Don’t

Ron Poliquin — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 18:43:05 +0000

Ron Poliquin, DoverLawOffice.com

So, take this job and shove it. You want to quit your job, you are being harassed at work, it’s a terrible atmosphere, it is a hostile work environment, you are the victim of workplace bullying. You are sure something illegal is going on, so you just want to quit your job, and sue the pants off those guys. Put some breaks on okay, take a breather. Here are a couple of reasons you might want to do that or might want to consider other strategies.

1. You may not have a case. Here is a dirty little secret of employment law, most people cannot sue their employers. Because you can basically be terminated for good reason, bad reason or no reason at all as long as it is not for an illegal reason. To judge if it is an illegal reason or not, you have to see a lawyer.

2. Even if you have a case, you won’t see a result for a long time. Your lawyer is not going to pay your bills, in fact, he is prohibited from lending you money. So you have to think about the realities of life. Litigation takes a long time, it could take years before you see a penny from a case.

3. There may be some alternatives. If you are under a lot of stress and it is considered a medical condition, maybe you take FMLA, take some leave. Perhaps you get some disability insurance from your company. Perhaps you can take some time off.

4. See a lawyer before you do anything. You want to be able to strategize and see a lawyer, even if it takes a consultation fee for a couple of hundred bucks, it’s worth it to know your rights.

5. Staying at your company could actually help your case. I have had times when what I have done is have the employee complain to the CEO, the highest up, so no one can say they did not know about anything.

6. Did you go through your company’s mandatory reporting complaint procedure? If you don’t the employer could use this as a defense later on that they did not know the harassment or the discrimination was going on. Therefore the company did not have a chance to remedy that and should not be held liable because the company did not have a chance to remedy the situation. So, you want to look at your employee handbook and see what the reporting procedure is. Let’s say the procedure is to report it to your supervisor but your supervisor is the one doing the harassing, then they usually have an alternative reporting procedure. But you need to let someone higher up know before you leave.

7. You need income. The employment case is not going to provide that and nor will your attorney.

8. Strategize with your lawyer. What is the next best move?

9. Even if you don’t have a case perhaps you can negotiate an exit. Giving some heads up as far as a couple of weeks notice. Maybe you get a good referral or at least not a bad referral. Maybe you can negotiate a severance package.

10. Look for a job while you have a job. A job is like dating, it is much easier to get a new girlfriend while you have a girlfriend than when you don’t have one. Looking for a job is a lot easier when you already have a job, you make yourself a more attractive candidate.

11. I realize I am repeating myself, but lawyer up. Talk to a lawyer, don’t cheap out on it. Spend a couple of hundred bucks on a consult. Know your rights and then you can make your next move from there.

This is Ron Poliquin saying, go to DoverLawOffice.com…exit out!

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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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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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Statute of Limitations Charge of Discrimination

Ron Poliquin — Wed, 19 Dec 2018 04:21:43 +0000

Delaware Employment Attorney, Ron Poliquin of the Poliquin Firm in Dover, Delaware discusses the statute of limitations charge of discrimination.

Statute of Limitations Charge of Discrimination

Ron Poliquin, your Delaware Employment Attorney, DoverLawOffice.com,

I am here to answer another question regarding employment law. Our topic today is, I just filed a charge of discrimination with the Department of Labor (DOL) or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Now what?

OK prior to suing anybody, prior to even stepping into court in regard to discrimination cases, for the most part we're talking about Title VII and it is the federal statute. There are also state statutes that mirror it. We are talking about race discrimination, disability discrimination, gender discrimination, hostile work environment, anything that deals with the protected class. Prior to suing based on your employment you got to file a charge of discrimination with the part Delaware Department of Labor (DOL) or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

You have to do that within 300 days of the last discriminatory act. There are all sorts of caveats that I got to tell you about. That I can't explain it in a 3-minute video you'll have to talk to an experienced employment attorney but that's a statute of limitations 300 days. Just think about it breach of contract 3 years, personal injury 2 years, now you have employment discrimination you got 300 days, not a long time by the way.

There are a lot of times people come to me and they are just SOL, which can stand for something else rather than statue limitations for them. You have to jump on these issues early. You have to see an attorney early. What happens is you have to visit the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and see if they can do dual charges. Meaning they can file charges in both for a federal cause of action and a state action with either the Delaware Department of Labor (DOL) office of anti-discrimination or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). I usually go with advising my clients to file with the Delaware Department of Labor (DOL) office of anti-discrimination and there's a dual charge, so you file on both so that you are covered for both the state cause of action and the federal cause of action. I feel like I'm saying cause of action way too much.

Alright but anyways, you're being discriminated against. What you do is, you call the Department of Labor (DOL) office of anti-discrimination. They are going to make you fill out a questionnaire something like this. It is going to be a bunch of pages based depending on what your claim is. Whether it's racial discrimination, gender discrimination, there's different forms to fill out so first you got to call them to set up an appointment. You got to fill out the intake sheet and then they'll set up an appointment. Now the Department of Labor (DOL) quite frankly is very backlogged, very understaffed and so it's going to take some time for that to happen. You are going to want to schedule that appointment right away because that is when they can back date the charge of discrimination.

So, you are going to want to:

Call the Department of Labor (DOL).
Fill out the intake sheet.
Get an interview to file a charge of discrimination.

A charge of discrimination is going to look something like this. It is going to be a form. I always like to help my clients feel this charge of discrimination out because it's very important. It is going to limit you later, on what you can sue about. You can file a lawsuit about race, color, sex, religion, you got to put the right check the right boxes here. It is really important and sometimes the intake worker for the Department of Labor (DOL) is not going to know exactly what you are looking to do. So, whether it is continuing an action and then you put the jurisdiction and there is going to be a brief statement of allegations. I like to draft this up myself for my client so there's no confusion later on where the defendant, because I represent workers for the most part, employees can say well you did not put that in your charge of discrimination therefore you cannot bring it up in court later on. This is a very important document. It is signed under penalty of perjury, but the confusion comes when you have a client or an individual that's being discriminated against. If this is somebody that's not sophisticated and the Department of Labor (DOL) intake worker doesn't quite know parts of the story. Maybe there not communicating it right and they screw up the charge of discrimination it can really screw the case up.

Okay so you do the interview then you finally get a stamped charge of discrimination. What happens after you get a filed charge of discrimination is, the employer will get that charge of discrimination.

They will be invited to:

20 days to answer the charge of discrimination. A lot of times they will ask for extensions on that.
They can seek mediation.

An answer is basically saying everything in here is untrue because of this, this and this. They are going to respond to the charge. Okay you say you were sexually harassed by boss X. They say that's not the case they deny it basically or they have the option to be invited to mediation. One thing I will guarantee, if your pro se litigant and you go to mediation with an employer do not expect to get much out of the employer. Simply because there's not a lot on the line yet. There's been no lawsuit filed and quite frankly even if you have an attorney during that mediation, a lot of times the employer will try to lowball you. They don't have any incentive at that point. They really have not lost anything. They might have paid an attorney. So, the mediation in my experience has been of limited success. But it's always good to explore mediation and see if there's any opportunity to resolve the case early on. There is a lot of benefit to that.

Okay, let's say they answer it, or you do it in mediation that wasn't successful. After that there will be an investigation by Department of Labor (DOL). How intense the investigation is…I don't know? It depends on how much interest your worker at Department of Labor is interested in investigating the case. It depends how backlogged they are. A lot of times what will happen is the investigator can come to a couple findings. They can do a cause finding, which yes, they find that there's been discrimination or there's been some kind of retaliation against the employee. They will say yes, we find that there has been discrimination. Two, no funding of discrimination or they can say there's no cause. So even after that, what happens after that? There are really no enforcement mechanisms unless the Department of Labor (DOL) takes the case, which they rarely do. You can’t take it to court and do anything with it. It is just a determination. Maybe it puts a little pressure on the employee if there's a cause finding but maybe it doesn’t. I have seen sometimes were it doesn't.

After there's a cause finding or no cause funding or there's going to suit to make. You can request a right to sue letter. The right to sue letter is very important because after you receive a right to sue letter you get 90 days to file suit. Alright so if you get a right to sue letter from Department of Labor (DOL) you are also going to have to request from the Employee Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) if you want the right to sue letter in federal court. A lot of stuff going on here, I realize it's complicated, but you got to realize if you don't take anything out of this video the most important thing is you only have 90 days to file suit after a right to sue letter. If early on in this process you think that this investigation by the Employee Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or Department of Labor (DOL) is not going to do you any good, you can request a right to sue letter early prior to the investigation or you can ask them right away if the investigation is going to take more than 180 days. I believe that's the number and almost every investigation is going to take more than 180 days.

A lot of times what I'll do in my cases is request the right to sue letter right away, so the case doesn't drag on. If it doesn't seem like the Department of Labor (DOL) or the Employee Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is going to really do anything about the case, then I'll request a right to sue letter. After you get that right to sue letter that's when you can file a lawsuit in court.

So just to recap:

You got to file charge of discrimination for dual charge with the Department of Labor (DOL) and Employee Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
You got to get a right to sue letter prior to filing a complaint in either state or federal court.

There are all sorts of nuances. Reach out to an experienced employment attorney, stand up for your rights. I hope that helps. Thanks!

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When Should You See An Attorney?

Ron Poliquin — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:53:25 +0000

Delaware Employment Attorney discusses, when should you see an attorney? How soon? The short answer is, as soon as possible regarding employment cases whether it be discrimination, whistle-blower or wage an hour.

When Should You See An Attorney?

Yes Ron Poliquin, DoverLawOffice.com, your Delaware Employment Attorney

Today’s subject is going to be, when should you see an attorney? How soon? The short answer is, as soon as possible regarding employment cases whether it be discrimination, whistle-blower or wage an hour. First of all, there is really harsh time restrictions, 300-days to file a charge of discrimination.

Secondly, the best time is to start early. The consultation is always confidential. Meaning just because you see an attorney and get information on the case, doesn’t mean that you’re going to take action. But once you wanna have the knowledge, you want to know what your rights are, know what you can do, once you get that knowledge, once know your rights, then you can decide whether to act on it or not. It is your decision, not the attorneys. I always tell people it’s your life, it’s your job, if you want me involved I’ll get involved. If you just want to know your rights that’s the best way to go. You don’t always have to act. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do something. That is one of the parts of my job where I talk with my client about strategic moves regarding their employment.

Another issue that comes out is, how do you navigate employment law? The worse situation is when somebody comes to me too late, meaning if they have ducked taking action or not taken actions, which have jeopardized their rights under the law. I would equate it to a similar tool, you got a surgeon that comes in on a botched surgery and there trying to fix it, or somebody tried to put stitches on their own face. It is much easier for me to be in from the beginning and device a strategy and plan of action with that client then to come afterwards, after everything’s already been done and try to fix things.

Just on a legal sense, there are very specific defenses that an employer can raise later on if you did not go through the proper steps. A lot of companies have employment manuals. That employment manual usually has some kind of procedure on how to report discrimination or retaliation and what steps to take. If you do not go through those steps and you have been discriminated against, one of the defenses they may raise later on and probably will raise, is that we didn’t know about it. Okay, we just didn’t know about. I don’t care if you say, hey everybody in this company knows about it. It was common knowledge. If you do not go through their proper process, it could dismiss your case. It could be a major issue in your case.

So from the start, it’s important for you to strategize with an attorney on how do we notify the employer? How do we protect your rights? How do we not jeopardize your status in a company? How do we make sure that everyone is on notice of what’s going on without hurting you as an employment? I know as well as anyone that it is a sticky situation. It is a highly precarious situation when you are in an adverse situation, an adverse setting with your boss especially if it’s a small company. A small company you have a few employees, that is not that is not a predicament people want to be in. So, we have to take all that into account in how we set up your case from the beginning while trying to protect your job at the same time. You are going to need someone to help you navigate that maze of employment law.

Another issue is, there’s going to be the HR people. Are the HR people really looking out for your best interest or they just protecting the company? Especially if the harasser or the bad actor, the person that has discriminated against you is the head of the company or your boss. Who is really HR going to be looking out for? They have got somebody being paid $35,000 a year in HR, what kind of background do these people have? Do you just have one HR person? Is there just some secretary handling the HR? A lot of times this happens in the small homegrown companies. You have really no real HR Department and nobody looking out for your rights. Even in larger companies, who is HR looking out for?

You need to have an advocate for you, as an attorney somebody in the background that you can trust wholeheartedly. The only communications that are confidential are you and your attorney. Your communications with HR, your statements with HR, are not confidential. HR is great, but we have to make sure we take the proper steps, so the company remedies the situation and knows about it but also a lot of times, let’s not be naive, that doesn’t happen. I kind of touched on it before but you also want to give the company an opportunity to fix the situation. Maybe you’re in a hostile work environment, maybe there’s a way to notify the company have them address it properly and then you go on and prosper in that company. A lot of times that’s not possible but it does happen. Maybe they do the right thing. Maybe a company or your employer does the right thing and they should be given the opportunity to do that.

The issue here is that when you do not go see a qualified attorney early, you’re really jeopardizing yourself in the future on what you want, if you don’t know what you don’t know. I’m not saying an attorney is essential for everything. But certainly, go see an attorney to have a consultation, at least know what your rights are. Then you can take the proper steps from there. Thanks for the time, I’m Ron Poliquin, DoverLawOffice.com. Thank you!

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