The Daily Record recently published an announcement that Michael Joseck has joined the Estate and Trusts practice at Joseph, Greenwald & Laake. Michael Joseck will provide counsel to individuals on matters in estate planning, estate and trust administration, and estate and trust taxation issues.

Michael is a proud graduate of the Western Michigan School of Law. While in law school, he was a member of the Moot Court, the Tax Law Society, and he volunteered in preparing tax returns for low-income individuals through the VITA program. Before joining JGL, he was the Chief Auditor for the Howard County Register of Wills. While there, he oversaw the estate audit department and the unique Maryland Inheritance Tax. He has also worked for a Delaware trust company and an accounting firm.

To read The Daily Record article, please click on the logo below. 

On June 8^th, Joseph Greenwald & Laake was a proud sponsor of the Prince George’s County Bar Association 2018 Golf Classic. Held at the Oak Creek Golf Course in Upper Marlboro, the golf tournament benefited the Law Links Internship Program. Participants spent the day playing golf, networking and enjoying an awards luncheon.

Law Links, founded in Baltimore City in 1994, is a 7-week paid internship for high school juniors and seniors that places them in law firms and law related fields. It is designed to prepare students to work in a professional work environments, and provides students with on-site internships and educational seminars held at the University Of Maryland School Of Law. 

Maryland’s democratic primary election is quickly approaching but not without some interesting legal distractions. Valerie Ervin had been the running mate of Kevin Kamenetz in a tightly contested Democratic primary. When Kamenetz died unexpectedly, Ervin replaced him as a candidate for governor. In light of that, Ervin sought a court order requiring reprinted or altered ballots for the primary so as to have her name placed on the ballot as a gubernatorial candidate. A judge denied that request, and Ervin is considering an appeal. Joseph, Greenwald & Laake principal Timothy F. Maloney spoke with The Daily Record about this unusual situation.

Maloney, who frequently litigates election law issues, shared that lawsuits like Ervin’s face nearly insurmountable challenges. “These challenges almost always fail. The loser has to prove not only that a violation of election law occurred, but that the violation more than likely changed the outcome. That’s a big hill to climb,” states Maloney.

To read the article in its entirety, please click on The Daily Record logo below.

Maloney is a preeminent trial lawyer who has obtained millions of dollars in recoveries for his clients in a wide variety of matters, including civil rights, employment discrimination, whistleblower actions and high-stakes business litigation. He is a committed advocate for the public good who has held leadership roles with many civic and charitable organizations.

Joseph Greenwald & Laake principal attorney Brian Markovitz has made his perspective of the recent Supreme Court ruling on Epic Systems v. Lewis. known in a commentary for The Daily Record. This ruling allows employers to require workers to forgo the ability to pursue class actions by including class waivers in arbitration agreements that they must sign as an employment condition.

“From a legal perspective, the majority’s decision is an intellectually dishonest political grab,” Markovitz shares.  

Markovitz continues, “The court’s holding now makes it likely that more corporations will include these arbitration requirements as part of their conditions for employment, if they did not already do so.”

To read the rest of the article, click the image below. 

Brian Markovitz is a principal in JGL’s Labor and Employment and Civil Litigation practice groups, and focuses on helping victims who have suffered severe injustices in the workplace. He represents individuals in complex employment litigation and appellate matters involving wrongful termination, retaliation by employers in response to reporting fraud or misconduct and discrimination on the basis on race, gender, age and sexual orientation.

 

With the recent cancellation of ABC’s sitcom Roseanne, many are talking about the First Amendment and its reach within the workplace. Did Roseanne have the right to speak her opinion? Does ABC have the right to fire her? JGL Principal Veronica Nannis explores this current situation from all sides in her most recent blog.    

ROSEANNE HAD EVERY RIGHT TO SAY WHAT SHE DID,

AND ABC HAD EVERY RIGHT TO FIRE HER

Free Speech in the Workplace

On Tuesday of this week, free speech and its immediate employment repercussions were on full display. When actress Rosanne Barr posted a tweet that many, including her employer ABC, viewed as abhorrent and repugnant, within hours her hit TV show was cancelled. Many applauded ABC’s decisive action, but others have questioned how it can fire Roseanne for exercising her First Amendment right to free speech. Like most answers in the law, there is a balancing act of everyone’s rights. While Roseanne had every right in a free society to speak her mind, her employer also had every right to fire her.

The First Amendment Does Not Cover Private Employers

“This is a free country, isn’t it?!” While this sentiment is commonplace and true, there is often a mistaken overuse or generalization of the First Amendment. Generally speaking, an employee without a contract has the right to speak his or her mind as long as that speech does not violate the law or infringe on another’s rights. At the same time, however, employers in the majority of at-will states also have the right to discipline, demote or fire an employee for any on-the-job speech it deems unacceptable. Despite our free country, private employers are typically allowed to censor speech that occurs on the job. They are also allowed to censor speech or activity that discriminates against, creates a hostile work environment or harasses another employee. In that regard, and as with all of our rights, our right to free speech generally ends where another person’s (or entity’s) rights begin.

One of the reasons that a private employer can censor speech is because the First Amendment does not cover private entities. It is expressly limited only to government – federal, state and local. It does not govern companies or individuals. So, there is no “freedom of speech” blanket protection while an employee is on the clock working for a private employer.

When Public Statements Lead To Public Firings

We’ve seen controversial public statements and the resulting very public firings before. In August 2017, a memorandum circulated that was authored by a senior Google employee and titled Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber. The memo argued that the reason for the low number of women in the tech industry was not a problem of a lack of diversity policies but instead is due to biological differences, including “higher agreeableness” and more “neuroticism,” that leave women less well-equipped to perform the work that tech jobs demand.             

The media coverage of the memo sparked vigorous debate and outrage. After several days of a media firestorm, Google terminated the memo’s author. In an email published by the Washington Post, Google’s CEO stated that although Google strongly supported the rights of its employees to express themselves and debate issues like those discussed in the memo, “[t]o suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct.” Relying on its employment policies including its Code of Conduct, Google fired the author. This firing was upheld by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in February 2018.

In Roseanne’s case, it has been reported that ABC put so called “morality clauses” into the show’s contracts that let ABC fire an actor for incurring “public disrepute or humiliation, contempt, scandal or ridicule” that “insults or offends the community or any substantial group thereof.”[1] In this social media age, ABC protected itself and its image with these contract clauses like many corporate employers and sponsors have done for decades. Presumably ABC triggered its morality clause when it quickly moved to fire Rosanne for the contents of her off-the-clock tweets.

At-Will Employment and Off-Work Protection States

How does it work for the average employee? Most employees do not have employment contracts and are not under morality clauses like celebrities. You should know your rights, be sensitive to others’ rights and know your employer’s rights too. Many states, including Maryland where I practice, California where Google is located and New York where ABC is headquartered, are all at-will employment states. An at-will state means that, absent a contract, certain union protection, legal prohibition or public policy, an employer can demote or fire an employee for any reason, or no reason at all. If you live in an at-will state, your private employer does not need a reason to fire you. So, while of course an employee can speak at will, a private employer can generally fire at will as well.

After confirming whether your state is at-will, look to see if there are any state laws protecting private employer censorship of speech for non-work related activities.

California is one of a handful of states, including Colorado, New York and North Dakota, in which there are state laws protecting limited out-of-work speech. For instance, though an at-will state, in California, employers may not fire an employee for engaging in lawful conduct occurring during nonworking hours and away from the employer’s premises.[2] Similarly in New York, an employer may not fire an employee because of his or her “legal recreational activities outside work hours, off of the employer’s premises and without use of the employer’s equipment or other property.”[3] These states are a decided minority, however, and most others do not have such employee protections on the state law books.

Given California’s state employment law protections, if the Google employee had given an off-the-clock speech about his political views related to IT and if he had not mentioned Google by name, Google would have had a harder time firing him for out-of-work activities. Similarly, if ABC had not included a broad morality clause in its actors’ contracts, it also may have had a harder, legally defensible decision to make than the swift firing we saw this week.

For most employees in at-will states, beware that although you are free to speak your mind in this country, that is a freedom from being imprisoned by the government for exercising your right to free speech. In the employment context, while employees are generally free to speak openly, employers are also free to fire for unwelcomed speech. While it will keep you out of prison, the First Amendment will not keep you out of the unemployment line.    

David Bulitt, JGL principal, takes a blended personal and professional approach to discussing the opioid epidemic with The Daily Record. Bulitt, a guest columnist for the Family Law edition of The Daily Record, provided a detailed look at the increasing drug abuse issues and how it is being addressed in Maryland.

Bulitt shares, “As both a family law practitioner and a parent who has a child with an opioid addiction, I have for many years had a front-row seat to the damage that drugs can do to a family. Some years ago, we would encounter opioid addiction in a divorce case only occasionally. However, as the scope of this epidemic has grown in Maryland, so has its prevalence in child custody, divorce and other family law matters.”

Bulitt discusses various steps that Maryland’s state courts have taken to provide appropriate services to people who are coping with opioid addiction, such as the Adult Opiate Recovery Court in Harford County, which is the first special docket in the state designed specifically for individuals facing opioid-related criminal charges.

To read the full article, click on the Daily Record Family Law logo below.

David Bulitt focuses his practice on complex family law cases, helping clients in Maryland and Washington, DC, through difficult times, including divorces, custody battles and other contentious domestic conflicts.  Clients regard David as both a skilled negotiator at the mediation table and as a staunch advocate in the courtroom.  David is also the author of two popular books of fiction.

 

In February of 2018, Maryland passed a law that gives rape victims the power to legally terminate parental rights of their rapist. JGL attorney David Bulitt praises this new law in an editorial piece for The Daily Record.

Bulitt begins his editorial with “In a period in American history that has seen a dramatic increase in public awareness of sexual assault, it was about time Maryland finally passed a law that permits rape victims to go to court to terminate the parental rights of a rapist.”

Maryland had been one of only six states that permitted perpetrators of a sexual assault that results in pregnancy to claim parental rights concerning the child. Under the new law, a rape victim is permitted to file a civil suit against her rapist in an effort to terminate his parental rights. Like 25 of the states that allow such lawsuits, Maryland requires only that the woman prove the rape under the standard of “clear and convincing evidence.” The man need not be convicted in criminal court as long as the woman is successful in pursuing her case under the less stringent “clear and convincing” standard.

The law was approved after nine previous unsuccessful efforts in the legislature. Reflecting on its road to becoming a law, Bulitt says, “I have little doubt that current social changes, in which society is becoming more sensitive to women’s claims of sexual assault and harassment, had something to do with this bill’s passage after more than a decade. And it did not go unnoticed, when the bill fell just short of approval in the final hours of last year’s session, the conference committee that failed to reach agreement on the details of the bill was composed entirely of men. This appearance of insensitivity to women’s rights was a factor that stirred leaders of both legislative chambers to make it a priority in 2018.”

To read the rest of the article, click on The Daily Record logo below.

David Bulitt is a family lawyer, and JGL’s Assistant Managing Director. For years, David has been included amongst the DC area’s top divorce lawyers and is a published author.

Earlier this week, Joseph Greenwald & Laake principal attorney Brian Markovitz spoke to Law360 regarding the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Epic Systems v. Lewis. The 5-4 majority opinion, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, gives employers the right to require workers to forgo the ability to pursue class actions by including class waivers in arbitration agreements that they must sign as an employment condition.

The Law360 piece outlines 5 key takeaways as a result of this court decision. Markovitz touches on a predicted class waiver explosion with stating the use of arbitration agreements containing class waivers will become more commonplace now, and that management attorneys now “definitely have to put class action bans into everything.”

From the viewpoint of workers advocates, Markovitz says that class action bans function a “license to steal,” because workers will not have the ability to pursue those claims in individual arbitration. Markovitz continues with “What [an employer] can do is take small amounts of money from people, a couple hundred bucks, and then [workers] can’t band together to go after losing these several hundred dollars, and there’s not a lawyer in the world who’s going to take a $300 case to arbitration where they’re probably going to lose.”

To read the rest of the article, click on the Law360 logo below.

Brian Markovitz is a principal in JGL’s Labor and Employment and Civil Litigation practice groups, and focuses on helping victims who have suffered severe injustices in the workplace. He represents individuals in complex employment litigation and appellate matters involving wrongful termination, retaliation by employers in response to reporting fraud or misconduct and discrimination on the basis on race, gender, age and sexual orientation.

         

On May 18^th, JGL attorneys Levi Zaslow, Maritza Carmona and Tim Maloney won nearly $260,000 in damages for their client, Mamoun Ashkar, who faced ethnic discrimination within his community of Riverdale Park in Prince George’s County. The Daily Record has since published an article about this case as it has meaningful impact on not just the Prince George’s County town but also for broader communities.

Mr. Ashkar, a Palestinian-American, became the owner of Greg’s Towing in January of 2015. Greg’s Towing is the only tow company in the Town of Riverdale Park in Prince George’s County and, for 30 years, it was the exclusive tow service provider for the town and its police department. Once Mr. Ashkar took over Greg’s Towing, he contacted Town representatives, including the police dept., to continue the company’s long standing relationship with the Town, but he was denied the by the Town, its employees and the police department through numerous instances that included derogatory language, name-calling and discriminatory statements.

“Local government cannot discriminate against its citizens and this case is about fairness, justice and equality and this verdict speaks to that,” Levi S. Zaslow told The Daily Record on Tuesday May 22^nd. “We are very open to sitting down with the town and speaking about these practices and ensuring a fair and equitable process going forward.”

Joseph, Greenwald and Laake, P.A. is proud to continue its longstanding tradition of providing a voice to victims of discrimination, such as Mr. Ashkar.

To read the full story, click on The Daily Record logo below.

 

Earlier this week Jerry Miller, a principal in Joseph, Greenwald & Laake’s Business Services Group, sponsored a junior golf team at the Doctors Community Hospital Foundation’s 23^rd Annual Golf Invitational. Miller’s team was a group of students from from the Southern Maryland Junior Golf Association (SMJGA) in Upper Marlboro. SMJGA is a non-profit association that is dedicated to providing educational, developmental, and life skills to Southern Maryland youth.

The Doctors Community Hospital is a non-profit community based facility that has served residents of Prince George’s County for 43 years. This golf tournament is one of the facility’s largest fundraisers of the year and has raised over $1 million dollars to date. Money raised from this event goes to health programs such as their mobile health clinics, which travel to various locations to provide no-cost medical services to the communities it serves. This year’s golf event marked its 23^rd anniversary and was held at the Queenstown Harbor Resort in Queenstown, Maryland. Over 200 people attended the event and enjoyed lunch, a closing reception, awards ceremony and various auctions.

 “I am proud to be a part of such wonderful organizations that help people in Prince George’s County,” stated Miller. “The team of junior golfers had a great time and enjoyed the event to its fullest. This annual event is certainly a celebration of the entire community.”

As a principal in Joseph, Greenwald & Laake’s Business Services Group, Jerry has years of experience serving business leaders. He excels not only in the legal side of business, but brings a honed business acumen to his clients’ sides. Jerry’s hands-on approach has been invaluable to his clients, many of whom have stayed with him for years.

Companies often give their employees a more relaxed dress code during the hotter summer months. While this allows for a more comfortable atmosphere in which to work, it can often create an environment of confusion around what is appropriate to wear. JGL’s Brian Markovitz recently spoke with Law360 to discuss the parameters of a summer dress code and corporate best practices.

“As it heats up, people wear less clothing, it’s important to remind people to keep it professional,” Markovitz states in the Law360 article. “Have your human resources person just reiterate what the policy is as far as appropriate length of clothing, coverage of clothing and what is and isn’t inappropriate clothing to wear.”

Law360 continues this discussion with direction for companies to follow. To read the full article, click the image below. 

As principal in Joseph, Greenwald & Laake’s Labor and Employment and Civil Litigation practice groups, Brian has extensive experience representing clients in labor cases. He has won his clients numerous highly profitable settlements and has been honored as one of the nation’s top 100 trial lawyers for his work.