Whistleblower Claims Waste and Incompetence in Legal Department
Whistleblower Holly Smith claims that sloppy legal work cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary claim settlements. The former assistant attorney for Atlanta filed suit against the city, accusing her superiors of incompetence and committing legal...
Can You Sue If Your Employer Fails to Pay Overtime?
Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, with US corporate offices are here in Georgia, was the subject of a recent Supreme Court hearing on the subject of unpaid overtime owed to their sale representatives. The sales representatives claimed they were asked to work extra...
Has Your Employer Violated Your HIPAA Privacy?
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) requires covered entities to abide by certain guidelines and rules that protect against the unauthorized use or disclosure of protected health information (PHI). Generally, covered entities may...
Elements of a Hostile Work Environment
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects against employment discrimination. In particular, it protects against discrimination that unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment....
Overtime Eligibility: Should You Be Paid More for 40+ Hours?
Whether Georgia and federal employment laws require your employer to pay overtime depends on whether you are a qualified worker and whether your employer is a covered employer. Any employer engaged in interstate commerce must abide by federal wage and overtime rules....
What to Do if You Have a Discrimination Claim
One of the first steps in pursuing a workplace discrimination claim against your employer is to file a formal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). But without proof, it’s just your word against your employer’s. How can you prove that your...
Time Limits on Filing Discrimination Claims
Unlike most either states, Georgia has neither a general statewide anti-discrimination statute nor a state administrative agency to process discrimination claims. Georgia’s Fair Employment Practices Act of 1978 makes it illegal for a state agency to discriminate...
Blowing the Whistle on Misconduct and Facing the Consequences
Literally dozens of federal laws protect whistleblowers from retaliation for complaining to their employers, unions, or government agencies about unsafe or unhealthful conditions in the workplace, violations of environmental-protection laws, public safety hazards, and...
How to File a Wrongful Termination Claim
Like many other states, Georgia is a right-to-work state. In right-to-work states, no implicit labor contract exists between employers and their employees. If there is no explicit, written contract specifying the conditions under which your employer can fire you from...