The National Federation of Independent Business just released the results of its most recent Covid-19 Small Business Survey. 546 businesses, all with fewer than 200 employees, provided their experiences on a variety of Covid related topics. The results that jumped off the page, however, were the two questions about the Covid vaccine.
Bobby Edwards, the manager of J&J Cafeteria in Conway, South Carolina, effectively enslaved JCS (to whom we refer with the fictitious name "Jack"), forcing him to work at the restaurant over 100 hours per week without pay. …In 1990, when Jack was 12 years old, he started working part-time at J&J Cafeteria as a dishwasher. He has an intellectual disability and an IQ of 70. After a few years of part-time work, Jack dropped out of high school and started working full-time at the restaurant. For the first 19 years of his employment, when the restaurant was owned and managed by different members of the Edwards family, Jack was always paid for his labor.
That, however, changed in September 2009, after Bobby Edwards took over the management of the restaurant. Edwards moved Jack into an apartment attached to the restaurant and forced him to work more than 100 hours per week without pay — usually 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. for 6 days and 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Sundays. Not only did Jack work long hours without pay, he was never given a day off. Edwards effected this forced labor by taking advantage of Jack's intellectual disability and keeping Jack isolated from his family, threatening to have him arrested, and verbally abusing him. His control over Jack also involved physical abuse. Once, when Jack failed to deliver fried chicken to the buffet as quickly as Edwards had demanded, Edwards dipped metal tongs into hot grease and pressed them to Jack's neck, resulting in a burn that fellow employees had to immediately treat. Other times, when Jack made supposed mistakes, Edwards whipped him with his belt, beat him with kitchen pans, and punched him with his fists. This treatment left Jack physically and psychologically scarred. Jack later said, "I felt like I was in prison. Most of the time I felt unsafe, like Bobby could kill me if he wanted. … I wanted to get out of that place so bad but couldn't think about how I could without being hurt."
At the time of sentencing, the judge ordered Edwards to pay Jack $272,952.96 in restitution, in addition to sentencing him to 10 years in prison.
Last month, the court of appeals ruled that Edwards should pay liquidated damages to Jack under the FLSA in addition to the $272,952.96 of back wages. Under the FLSA, an aggrieved employee is entitled to an award of liquidated damages in an amount equal to the total amount of unpaid wages (i.e., double damages) unless the employer can show (1) that it acted in good faith; and (2) that it had reasonable grounds to believe it had complied with the FLSA. I see no way possible that Edwards could have ever hoped to have met that standard.
Thus, at the end of the day, Jack should receive a total award of $545,905.92 in restitution. Of course, how Edwards intends to make good on his substantial obligation to Jack is another story.
Finally, my offer to Bobby Paul Edwards still stands. If the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina, will not allow him to collect his trophy, I’ll have it waiting for him to claim when he's released in 2029.
In a stunning show of ignorance, a Miami, Florida, private school has informed its staff that because the Covid-19 vaccine poses a health risk to those in close proximity to those who have been vaccinated, those who have already received the vaccine must physically distance from students and anyone vaccinated will not be permitted to return to work after the summer break.
McDonald's has lots of secrets. What's in its sauce? What part of the chicken do the McNuggets come from? How come every time I crave a cone the soft-serve machine is out of order? Why do their soft drinks taste better than anyone else's?
Something that's not a secret, however, is that McDonald's has a serious sexual harassment problem.
As we move into the vaccination campaign focused on working-age adults, one concern I've heard from so many Americans is that they can't afford to take the time off to get vaccinated or lose a day's work because they are feeling slightly under the weather after their shot. I'm calling on every employer, large and small, in every state to give employees the time off they need -- with pay -- to get vaccinated, and any time they need -- with pay -- to recover if they're feeling under the weather after the shot. No working American should lose a single dollar from their paycheck because they chose to fulfill their patriotic duty of getting vaccinated.
According to a recent Axios-Ipsos poll, vaccination efforts may have plateaued, and most people who've not yet been vaccinated don't plan to get vaccinated.
A couple of months ago I was approached by the That One Case podcast to record an episode. This show asks lawyers to share the story of one case that has stood out over their careers. As they pitched it, that case could be a big win that defined my career, a turning point that took my work down an unexpected path, or simply the case of which I am most proud.
Consider the following Covid safety and health violations OSHA recently uncovered at a Massachusetts tax preparation business.
I haven't taken a proper vacation in 25 months. We were supposed to go to Portugal last March, but then Covid happened. In the 13 months since, there's been little point in taking off from work for any length of time because I haven't been able to go anywhere. "I can't go anywhere, so I might as well work," has been a popular pandemic refrain (me included).
Americans were bad at vacations before Covid. The pandemic certainly hasn't helped our PTO hesitancy.
One of the lasting lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic for businesses is our broken state unemployment systems. State governments have paid out tens of billions of dollars in bogus unemployment claims. And with claims paid comes tax forms reporting the income related to those claims.
Consider the story of just one taxpayer, as relayed by the Wall Street Journal.
Michael Baird, a 33-year-old marketing manager in Chicago, hasn't lived in Texas for several years. And yet there was a tax form from the state of Texas sitting at his parents' house in Houston, showing that the state had paid him $1,014 in unemployment benefits.
In the history of this blog's 3,603 posts, I've never written about the False Claim Act. If you've been waiting with bated breath for me to fix this omission, today's your lucky day, thanks to United States ex rel. David Felten, M.D., Ph.D. v. William Beaumont Hosp. (6th Cir. 3/31/21). Before diving into the Felten case, let's first take a 61-word peek at the False Claims Act and to what it applies.
The False Claims Act is a federal statute that imposes liability on people and companies that defraud the federal government, and further, relevant to Felten, permits private citizens (which the law calls "relators") to file lawsuits (known as qui tam claims) on behalf of the government and protects relators from retaliation when the lawsuit they are filing is against their employer.
At issue in Felten is whether the FCA's anti-retaliation protections only cover current employees, or whether they also extend to an employer's former employee who blows the whistle by filing a qui tam suit.