1. Boris was a physician on the staff of a city hospital. He was an at-will employee. He was a recent immigrant from an East European country that had a healthcare system that was years behind that of the U.S. in terms of technology and equipment. Consequently, equipment that was deemed to be obsolete in Boris's hospital was often considered to be nearly state-of-the-art in his homeland. A number of such pieces of lab equipment were targeted for disposal by his department at the hospital. Without seeking permission, Boris rented a truck and with the help of a friend, took the equipment from the hospital's rear loading dock and, easily finding a buyer, shipped the equipment off to a healthcare facility in his homeland. When the hospital learned what Boris had done, he was fired. The hospital also called the police and filed a criminal complaint. However, when the local DA studied the police report, she determined that the equipment had been abandoned by the hospital and therefore no crime had been committed.
Does Boris have a claim of wrongful discharge? Does your answer change if the hospital's employee handbook said that employees would be fired only for" good cause"?
Does your answer change if Boris had salvaged equipment like this before, but with the advance permission of the head of his department, and he assumed that he had standing permission to continue doing so?
2. Wisconsin statute prohibits corporate employees from falsifying business records. A company's CEO requested that the company's payroll clerk cut her a bonus check without making any payroll deductions. The payroll clerk countered that in his opinion the IRS Code required that payroll deductions be taken out of the bonus check. The CEO countered that she would be personally responsible for any tax liability that resulted from the clerk's issuing a lump sum payment.
Does the payroll clerk, who was an at-will employee, have a cause of action for wrongful discharge under Wisconsin law? On what legal theory?
See Strozinsky v. School District of Brown Deer [237 Wis. 2d 19, 614 N.W.2d 443 (2000)].
3. Trosper filed a complaint alleging the following: Bag'N Save employed her as a"deli manager." During the course of her employment, she suffered work-related injury which required medical treatment. When she reported her injury to her employers, the company demoted her from "deli manager" to" deli clerk, "and her annual salary decreased from $30,100 to $22,500. Trosper's complaint does not allege that she filed for workers' compensation. Bag 'N Save, however, acknowledges that Trosper filed a workers' compensation claim and that she reported the injury under the Nebraska Workers' Compensation Act.
Does Trosper seem to have a prima facie case of retaliatory demotion? What legitimate business reasons might the company have for demoting Trosper in the wake of her injuries? If the company has mixed motives in demoting her, what should be the result?
See Trosper v. Bag N Save [273 Neb. 855, 734 N.W.2d 704 (2007)].
4. A company allowed its employees to take a half-hour lunch break. However, the break was uncompensated, and the employees were not permitted to leave the employer's premises during the break. Nevertheless, these employees did leave their positions on the production line and eat in an employee lunchroom. They also went outdoors at their discretion.
Should the employer be required under the FLSA to compensate these hourly production workers for their thirty-minute lunch breaks? What about maintenance workers who might be recalled early from their lunch breaks if an equipment breakdown required it?
See Brown v. Howard Industries, Inc.
[116 F.Supp 2d [PN764 (S.D. Miss.2000)].