Operative Employment And Contract Law Case Study

Operative Employment and Contract Law

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, protected classes of employees are protected from discriminatory acts by employers. (McAdams, Zucker, & Neslund, 2015) The protected classes include: race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; private sector employers with more than 15 employees are required to comply with this Act. (McAdams, Zucker, & Neslund, 2015) Title VII covers two kinds of discrimination: disparate treatment or disparate impact. (McAdams, Zucker, & Neslund, 2015) Disparate treatment is the intentional discrimination of one employee whereas disparate impact can be unintentional employment discrimination despite however neutral an employer’s policy could be. (Kleiman & Kass, 2004)

• Genuineness of Assent: The employee is made aware of what the agreement means and how it functions within the employment relationship.

• Legality of Purpose: The Uniform Trade Secrets Act supports the protection of trade secrets and therefore the agreement is not in violation of any law.

If an individual obligated by a confidentiality agreement, therefore, appropriates a trade secret from an entity and the trade secret has economic value, and then proceeds to transfer to another entity through inducement or proceeds to otherwise economically benefit from the information, (Cowen, Cavendish, Cosway, & Dole, 1985) then the individual may be in violation of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Additionally, court cases since the creation of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act have determined that while the Plaintiff in these cases must demonstrate that the trade secret was misappropriated, they are not required to prove a direct copy of the misappropriated trade secrets but rather show that there is reasonable suspicion that the defendant was party to a process derived from the original. (Kline & Floyd) Since the creation of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, individual states including New Hampshire, have adopted the Uniform Trade Secrets Act in their own manner and have since

Stauffer Incorporated, the Plaintiff had a similar claim to Ms. Lawson in that she was certain that she was fired in a discriminatory manner which was the result of disparate treatment, alleging violating of PDA, ADA, and FMLA. (GUDENKAUF, v. STAUFFER COMMUNICATIONS, 1996) A significant distinction is that the employee was fired for work performance whereas Ms. Lawson was simply laid off in a company restructuring. The court found in this case that the employer was within its right to evaluate the defendant’s performance at work without regard to her pregnant status, consistent with the PDA, and to deny the claims for ADA and FMLA. (GUDENKAUF, v. STAUFFER COMMUNICATIONS, 1996) Unpaid, job-protected leave was not required because the defendant could not provide substantial evidence to support the claim under ADA that she was incapacitated by her pregnancy which would have permitted unpaid leave under FMLA. For that reason, the employer was granted summary judgment. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2001) Since Ms. Lawson was laid off, FMLA and ADA protections would not apply.

In Atchley v. Nordham, an employee returning from maternity leave was separated from employment after a company restructuring. (ATCHLEY v. The NORDAM GROUP, 1999) The court gave summary judgment to the Plaintiff since the employer had previously allowed employees on maternity leave to return to their previous positions even if their positions were slated to be removed in the restructuring.