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Employment Contracts

What are the pros and cons of requiring staff to sign mandatory arbitration clauses?

08/06/2009

Q. My company is considering requiring employees to agree to an arbitration clause to resolve any employment disputes, including discrimination complaints. I have been told it is a good risk-management tool for avoiding high legal defense costs and big jury verdicts. Do you agree?

What’s a bad firing cost? For one company, $4 billion

07/28/2009

Yes, you read right. Four billion dollars. Billion—with a “B”! A California superior court recently confirmed an award of $4.1 billion against a Chinese company, its U.S. affiliate and its founder after an arbitrator found them liable in a compensation dispute with a former executive.

What should we do? A contract refers to both ‘termination for cause’ and ‘at-will’ employment

07/27/2009

Q. We need to fire an employee who has an employment contract that limits termination without notice to “for cause” events. Must we abide by this provision if another provision in the contract clearly indicates that his employment is “at will” only?

What should I consider when updating our noncompete agreements?

07/27/2009

Q. The employment and noncompete agreements we have with our salespeople are several years old and appear outdated to me. May I require everyone to sign new, updated agreements?

Contract conundrum: Pay lawyer now, or pay employee later?

07/27/2009

Confusing contract language did not cost a New Jersey car dealer millions of dollars, but in this economy, who can afford to lose even a little?

Company Records: What to Keep, What to Dump

07/21/2009
A records retention schedule ensures that an organization keeps the records it needs for operational, legal, fiscal or historical reasons, and then destroys them when they’re no longer useful. You have to know what you have and how long to keep it—legally and for your own business purposes—before you can establish an efficient records management system.

Can we require riffed employees to sign a release before they receive severance pay?

07/20/2009

Q. Under our company policy, employees who are terminated because of a reduction in force are entitled to severance pay. Can we require them to execute a release in order to receive severance pay?

You can require arbitration of termination wage claims

07/17/2009

It can be months or years of administrative hearings to decide how much you are obliged to pay terminated employees. That’s one reason the Court of Appeal of California has begun advocating arbitration as a legal alternative to hearings.

Check employment agreements for commission cutoffs

07/17/2009

Here’s a good idea if you are reviewing employment agreements that spell out how you pay commissions: Be sure to specify that the end of employment means the end of commissions.

Funny thing about noncompetes: They protect employees, too

07/08/2009

Rather than trying to wage a court fight over what increasingly looked like a losing battle, a local company has decided to settle with an employee who sued to enforce a noncompete agreement he had signed.