Plaintiff Lawyers as Employers: How to Avoid Becoming a Defendant

The broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen only mode. Hello, this is Alan crone. And welcome to the film of webinar, plaintiff lawyers as, uh, playing for us as employers, how to avoid becoming a defendant. Uh, as I said, my name is Alan crone. I’m with the crone law firm here in Memphis, Tennessee.

And, uh, I’m, uh, I’m essentially a plaintiff’s employment lawyer, although, uh, I always say I represent right thinking, uh, employers as well. Uh, and one thing that I’ve gotten into over the last few years is representing, uh, other lawyers in employment matters, uh, particularly, um, uh, law firms that have anywhere from five to 100,

uh, uh, staff members. And I really have enjoyed that work, enjoy working with lawyers, I’m married to a lawyer. So I, uh, uh, I think I know how lawyers think. And a lot of times we lawyers think that a, because we’re lawyers, we’re immune from, from lawsuits and that’s, as we know, that’s not necessarily the case,

whether it’s malpractice or, uh, employment matters. And so, uh, can’t ask me to do this, this webinar, and I’m really excited about it. As you can tell, I’m a employment lawyer in Memphis, I’m a graduate of the university of Memphis, which is probably going to the cotton bowl, uh, around new year’s Eve. And we’re really excited about that.

Uh, and so if I’m a little distracted, it’s because I’m making my travel plans for Dallas the first time in our history. So we’re excited as you know, we’ve got, uh, the ability for, for folks to ask questions. Uh, I would love for this to be interactive. So if you, if you want to chat a question as we go along,

I’ll try to answer them in real time, if not at the end, uh, please, um, uh, please ask, ask questions. We could do a several day seminar on employment law. Uh, it’s very complicated, uh, very detailed. I’m going to hit a lot of the high points in this presentation, but if you’ve got a specific question that may be the most,

the most beneficial, uh, and, um, uh, I’m also going to kind of stick with, uh, federal law as opposed to state law. There are lots of state laws out there. So your experience might be a little different in, uh, in your jurisdiction. For example, in Tennessee, we have a human rights act, which is a mirror of the federal federal title seven,

which is the discrimination, uh, laws that we’ll talk about in a moment. And, uh, they, it has its own, uh, limits, et cetera, similar to the federal federal law. So, uh, always check your state laws. And if you need some help with that, we can help with specific situations. But for the purposes of this,

of this presentation, I’m going to stick primarily with, with federal law, probably the question I’m asked the most, uh, centers around, uh, terminations and what I’m going to talk about with regard to determinations, uh, applies to discrimination lawsuits as well as unemployment compensation hearings. Uh, I was the, I was the chief counsel for the of employment security here in Tennessee,

back in the nineties, which is the department that administered the unemployment law. So I’ve got a lot of insight into that. And frankly, the things, even though the standards are a little different between the discrimination laws and the employment compensation laws, unemployment compensation has a far wider application than discrimination. So if you’re in compliance with, uh, the, the,

uh, unemployment compensation, uh, laws, then that ought to provide you a good defense against any discrimination lawsuits, because they’re, they’re a little bit tired. So let’s talk about, uh, about wrongful termination. Every state in the country starts out except maybe one or two, start out with the concept of employment at will, and that doctrine States that anybody can be fired at any time for any reason.

And that was, uh, the state of the law at common law. Tennessee used to be a part of North Carolina, North Carolina used to be a part of great Britain. And that’s a legal concept that comes down to us from the common law of, uh, of great Britain and a lot of European countries. And I always say, think, uh,

Lords and serfs, and that’s where the American workers start. So if you have an employee, you, uh, you have the ability to hire or fire them at will, for any reason, whether it’s fair, arbitrary, uh, unfair, et cetera. Now over the course of the last a hundred years or so States and the federal government have,

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