NorthCarolinaLaw

https://edelsteinpayne.com/employment-law 4th Circuit: GEICO Investigators Not Exempt from FLSA Overtime Requirement Originally Posted by Sean Cecil Jan 29, 2016 (0 Comments) The Fair Labor Standards Act   requires, subject to several exceptions, overtime pay of 150% an employees' regular rate for work in excess of 40 hours in a week. (It is not true that you are exempt from overtime merely by virtue of being a salaried employee.) One common set of exceptions that cause a lot of confusion is the Executive, Administrative, and Professional (EAP) exceptions, commonly referred to as the “white collar” exceptions. The EAP exceptions focus on actual job duties as opposed to job titles, and have been subject to extensive litigation over the years. As a threshold matter, no EAP exemption applies to employees who are paid less than $455/week (the Obama Administration is in the process of an administrative rulemaking that would increase this minimum threshold to $955/week). ...

www.edelsteinpayne.com New York Times series on Arbitration Clauses should be required reading for consumers Originally Posted by Sean Cecil Nov 03, 2015  (0 Comments) While I personally have mixed feelings about arbitration (it can be a relatively fast and cheap way to address a wrong in certain circumstances) the  Times' great series on the serial abuse of arbitration clauses  should be mandatory reading for all consumers. The reporting details how arbitration clauses have found their way into dispute resolution of everything "from botched home renovations to medical malpractice" and are being used to prevent consumers from seeking redress through use of class action lawsuits, which are invaluable for correcting widespread misbehavior with small individual damages that make it impossible for a particular consumer to address acting alone. "Some state judges have called the class-action bans a “get out of jail free” card, because it is nearly impossibl...

www.edelsteinpayne.com 4th Circuit: Evidence Suppressed because Police Detained Suspect Without Reasonable Suspicion of Criminal Activity Originally Posted by Sean Cecil Oct 28, 2015  (0 Comments) The exclusionary rule prevents the government from presenting in a criminal case evidence that is tainted by a violation of the suspect/defendant's constitutional rights. In some cases the rule may result in suppression of all evidence of a crime and dismissal of criminal charges; in others, a successful appeal can lead to reversal of a conviction at the appellate level and a remand to the trial court for a new trial without the tainted evidence, often referred to as the "fruit of the poisonous tree." Suppression or exclusion of evidence follows a court ruling that the evidence is tainted, usually after a defendant's motion. Probably the most common evidence to be suppressed is evidence of contraband (such as drugs or a firearm), possession of ...

www.edelsteinpayne.com/employment-law Halliburton Agrees to Pay Over $18 Million in Overtime Owed to Misclassified Workers Originally Posted by Sean Cecil Sep 28, 2015  (0 Comments) Acknowledging that employees in 28 different job positions were misclassified as exempt from overtime payments, oil and gas services giant Halliburton recently agreed to pay one of the largest overtime recoveries in Department of Labor history. The jobs, such as field service reps, pipe recovery specialists, drilling technology advisors, and others, were paid a salary and treated as exempt from the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The company also did not bother to keep records of the time put in by misclassified workers. Every worker should know that they are not exempt and ineligible for overtime based solely on their receipt of a salary, as opposed to hourly employment. The FLSA has exemptions for salaried workers in bona fide executive, administrative, profession...

www.edelsteinpayne.com/employment-law Anniversary of the Imperial Foods Fire Originally Posted by Sean Cecil Sep 03, 201 Today marks the 24th anniversary of the notorious Imperial Food Products fire in Hamlet, North Carolina. In the fire, 25 workers died and 49 were injured because of unsafe conditions, including a locked exit door; according to the NC Dept. of Labor, the investigation found "numerous violations of various laws designed to protect workers." The plant had never received a safety inspection during its eleven years of operation. The fire was North Carolina's worst non-mining industrial disaster. It is simply amazing that an incident like this could occur 80 years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City, which killed 146 workers and led to many workplace safety laws.  The Imperial Foods Factory- Imperial's operators usually kept the doors of the chicken plant padlocked and the windows boarded, to prevent theft, vandal...