The two-day mistake that sent retaliation claim to trial

Two days.

That's the entire gap between John Shoemaker asking McKesson Corp. for FMLA leave and McKesson telling him he was fired. 

A federal judge just said that two-day gap alone survives summary judgment.

Big firm ability. Small firm agility.

Big firm ability. Small firm agility.

That's Wickens Herzer Panza in six words. Chambers just backed it up three times over.

Wickens Herzer Panza picked up three rankings in the 2027 Chambers Ohio Spotlight Guide: Labor & Employment (the group I lead), Corporate/Commercial, and Litigation: General Commercial.

Only two other firms in all of Ohio matched that. Nobody beat it.

Reprehensible conduct, forgettable price tag

"What may be awesome punishment for an impecunious individual defendant may be wholly insufficient to influence the behavior of a prosperous corporation."

That's the 3rd Circuit, not me. And it's the whole ballgame in Holmes v. American HomePatient.

Here's what earned that line. Patricia Holmes was the only Black employee at AHOM's Penn State office. Her supervisor asked her, "what do you think about the N-word?" then Googled it—misspelling it "Niger"—while a coworker sounded it out for him like a grade-schooler. Both laughed. Weeks later, during a mask fit test that required a hood over Holmes's head, the same supervisor had a coworker film it, then joked it was "ironic to see a white woman putting a white hood on a black woman's head." He laughed in her face.

The fist inside the velvet glove

"The inherent danger in well-timed increases in benefits is the suggestion of a fist inside the velvet glove."

That's the 5th Circuit, describing what Starbucks did to its Buffalo stores once a union showed up. The court's recent opinion in Starbucks Corp. v. NLRB reads like a playbook of exactly what not to do during an organizing campaign.

Mathing the overtime calculation for bonuses and incentive comp

Boeing built its overtime checks on base hourly rate alone. Nothing else. Not the bonus. Not the incentive pay. Just the base rate, run through a straight 1.5x multiplier.

That's the allegation, at least, in a proposed class action Boeing just removed to federal court. Plaintiff Jerry Belmonte Llarenas, a former quality assurance inspector, says the company's Aerospace Incentive Plan bonuses should have been folded into his "regular rate of pay" before Boeing calculated overtime. They weren't.