The Library

According to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and other federal circuits, the overtime calculation is significantly more employer friendly when paying salaried non-exempt employees. Keep in mind that just because an employee is salaried does not automatically mean that he or she is not entitled to overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The determination as to exempt or non-exempt is based on the actual duties performed – not whether the employee is paid a salary. The Fourth Circuit, joining several other courts as well as the Department of Labor, has held that salaried employees may only be […]

Gentry Locke Partner Todd Leeson is an associate member of the National Association of College and University Attorneys. 2014 was the year that sexual assaults of college students became an important part of our nation’s discourse. In the last year or two, there have been a flurry of new Federal laws, regulations, guidance documents, proposed laws, and initiatives on the topic. In my communications with College Title IX coordinators in Virginia and other interested parties, I have found that it has been challenging for them to keep up with these developments. This is a short article that provides a description […]

On December 11, 2014, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) issued its long-awaited decision in Purple Communications, Inc., 361 NLRB No. 126 (Dec. 11, 2014).  Purple Communications is a non-union company that had a computer and email policy that limited use of its email for “business purposes only.”  The policy also banned employees from “engaging in activities on behalf of organizations or persons with no professional or business affiliation with the Company,” and stated that employees could not send “uninvited email of a personal nature.”  In a highly controversial 3-2 decision, the Board majority concluded:  “we decide today that employee […]

The Department of Labor (DOL) promulgated a Final Rule which made a number of changes to the regulations concerning the companionship services exemption from the minimum wage and overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). These changes were scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2015. The Final Rule would have drastically reduced the number of domestic employees who would be entitled to an exemption from minimum wage and overtime. There are two major components in the Final Rule:  (i) the companionship exemption would only be available to individuals and families who employ workers in the home directly (rather […]

Each year employers and employees in a variety of industries across the country face issues related to violence in the workplace. Given that the hospitality industry faces issues involving everything from alcohol consumption to guest frustration on a near-daily basis, it is particularly susceptible to workplace violence. Generally, workplace violence can be categorized in two ways: (1) violence by one employee upon another or (2) violence by a third party upon an employee. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) reports that on average, 1,700,000 workers are injured each year as a result of workplace violence.  It is so […]

Mineral rights cases are property disputes that often turn on obscure questions of historic ownership or interpretation. For example if a river name changes over time, land previously described as “on the banks of the Smith River” is now on the banks of the Jones River, and the deed may become vulnerable to legal challenge. Likewise, when Becky’s Creek flowed into Smith River, it was a Smith River tributary; but, now, it is within the Jones River watershed. Today’s GPS technology allows us to find our way around anywhere and describe locations not only by postal address but also by […]

This article was first published as a guest post on Gentry Locke’s Virginia Construction Law Update blog.  “Except in the middle of the battlefield, nowhere must men coordinate movement of other men and all materials in the midst of such chaos and with such limited certainty of present facts and future occurrences as in a huge construction project . . .” — Blake Construction Co. v. C.J. Coakley Co., 431 A.2d 569, 575 (D. C. Ct. App. 1981) How true. Anyone who has stepped foot onto the site of a large construction project understands it is little more than bedlam […]

This article by Todd Leeson was published in the Winter/Spring 2015 edition of “Virginia Human Resources Today” magazine, a publication of the Virginia Society for Human Resource Management. In Three D, LLC, 361 NLRB No. 31 (Aug. 22, 2014), the NLRB held that an employer unlawfully terminated two employees who had posted content on Facebook that the employer considered to be disloyal or defamatory. What can Virginia employers learn from this case? Triple Play is a restaurant owned in part by Ralph DelBuono. In January 2011, employees learned that they owed more in state taxes than expected. In response to […]

While we wait for the days of retina scanners to unlock our smartphones — á la movies like Batman (1966 version), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and GoldenEye (1995) — we must wrestle with whether or not to enable our devices with the now standard thumbprint security identification. In case you missed it, Virginia Beach Circuit Court Judge Steven C. Frucci ruled that requiring a criminal defendant to provide his passcode to unlock his phone for investigators pursuant to a search warrant violates the Fifth Amendment right to be free from self-incrimination. Judge Frucci explained that giving […]