Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for 2010

EEOC sues over employer use of credit record in hiring

Following extensive rumblings of an impending crackdown, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has sued Kaplan, the private education company, over its alleged policy of considering applicants’ credit records in making hiring decisions [Baltimore Sun, George Lenard; earlier here and here]

More from Ted Frank: “Somebody should tell the Transportation Security Administration, which also performs credit checks: they reject job applicants if they have more than $5000 in overdue debt.” And from the same link:

But what’s also driving the push to check credit is fear of lawsuits, [employment attorney Manesh] Rath said, especially in businesses where employees have access to customers’ money or possessions, including the banking, property management, hotel and home health care industries.

…”The employer will have a tough time defending itself,” Rath said, “if it didn’t take the simple measure of doing a background check.”

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Ted Frank on the Dukes v. Wal-Mart class action

The problem, Ted writes in the Examiner, isn’t that the class action is “too large” — even very large classes can sometimes fit the law’s requirements that each claim be identical in nature and capable of standing or falling together.

But the theory of the Dukes lawsuit is exactly the opposite: the plaintiffs claimed that Wal-Mart’s central office did not exercise enough authority over each of its 3,400 stores; each of the individual managers’ discretionary employment or promotion decisions–whether made by male or female managers–was, on average, discriminatory; and thus Wal-Mart was responsible for a policy that “fosters or facilitates” discrimination. …

The discrimination laws permit Wal-Mart to defend itself by demonstrating that the challenged job decision was made for a reason other than gender. For example, looking at Betty Dukes, the named plaintiff, alone, we learn that she had a female manager and that she was repeatedly disciplined for returning late from lunch breaks. …Wal-Mart is stripped of its defense because the individualized defense would be inconvenient to trying the case as a class action. …

If the Supreme Court rules in Wal-Mart’s favor later this year, it will not be to protect business, but to protect due process.

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December 20 roundup

  • Texas Gov. Rick Perry may urge the state to take a step toward loser-pays [NJLRA]
  • “FCC push to regulate news draws fire” [The Hill]
  • Could litigation on behalf of Madoff victims get more than all their money back? [Salmon, more, NYT, Above the Law]
  • “Chevron Says Documents Show Ecuador Plaintiffs Worked With Government” [Dan Fisher/Forbes, more]
  • Organized trial lawyers expect to fare less well in next Congress, but prospects for actual liability reform remain slender [Joseph Weber/Wash. Times, Matthew Boyle/Daily Caller]
  • Mount Laurel rulings in New Jersey (towns given quotas to build low-income housing) described as “libertarian”, I express doubts [Hills, Prawfsblawg]
  • Criminal law’s revolving door: “prosecutors turn up the fire and then sell extinguishers” [Ribstein, TotM]
  • The wages of unconstitutionality: a Utah attorney’s curious fee niche [five years ago on Overlawyered]

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