Pennsylvania Workers Compensation Attorney Blog

As a lawyer who regularly represents workers who have been injured or discriminated against in the workplace, I was interested to read a recent study published in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, that analyzed the outcomes in employment discrimination cases filed in federal court from 1988 through 2003. The study, entitled "Individual Justice or Collective Legal Mobilization? Employment Discrimination Litigation in the Post Civil Rights United States," concluded that most employment discrimination cases are settled for relatively small amounts of money, and that plaintiffs won only two percent of the cases that were filed at trial. According to the study, most employment discrimination claims involve single plaintiffs (as opposed to class actions) and most plaintiffs are outgunned by their employers in a litigation process that tends to favor repeat players in the systems such as large corporations.

The study confirms what most plaintiff-side employment lawyers already know: employment discrimination plaintiffs often face an uphill battle in federal court and greatly increase their chances of obtaining a favorable result if they are represented by a lawyer with experience in employment rights litigation. You can read an abstract of the article here.

Continue reading "Study Documents Challenges Faced By Workers In Federal Court" »

The lawyers at Kunkel & Fink, LLP are pleased to announce that by order dated July 24, 2009, United States District Court Judge David S. Cercone approved a $480,000.00 settlement of a class action lawsuit alleging a violation of the Worker Adjustment Retraining and Notification Act (“WARN Act”) with respect to the closing of the Anchor Glass plant located in Connellsville, Pennsylvania on November 4, 2004. Kunkel & Fink, LLP filed the lawsuit on behalf of the former Anchor Glass employees in a lawsuit that was captioned: Douglas P. Wissler and Gregory A. Vinoski v. Cerberus Capital Management, L.P., Cerberus International Ltd., Cerberus Institutional Partners, L.P., Cerberus Institutional Partners (America) L.P., and Stephen A. Feinberg, Civil Action No. 06-1042.

The WARN Act is a federal law that prohibits covered employers from ordering a plant closing or a mass layoff without first providing affected employees with sixty days notice of the closing or layoff. The policy underlying the WARN Act is to ensure that workers receive advance notice of plant closures and mass layoffs that affect their jobs so that they have time to adjust to their loss of employment and to obtain other employment.

The plaintiffs initially filed suit against Anchor Glass Container Corporation but that suit was dismissed when Anchor Glass filed for bankruptcy in August 2005. Subsequently, the plaintiffs filed suit against Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. and related entities that the plaintiffs alleged were the largest shareholders of Anchor Glass at that time of the Connellsville plant closing. The lawsuit charged that Anchor Glass failed to provide sixty days advance notice of the closing of its plant located in Connellsville, Pennsylvania on November 4, 2004, as required by the WARN Act, and that the Cerberus defendants could be held liable under the WARN Act based on their alleged de facto control over the corporation.

The settlement class covers approximately 275 former hourly employees who were notified on November 4, 2004 that the Connellsville plant was closing and that they were permanently laid off from their jobs. Under the terms of the Court-approved settlement, the settlement fund will be distributed equally to those members of the class who submitted timely claim forms in equal shares after a deduction for attorneys’ fees and costs as well premium payments for the named class representatives. While agreeing to the settlement, the Cerberus defendants denied at all times that they could be held liable under the WARN Act by virtue of their stock ownership or that Anchor Glass violated the WARN Act when it closed the Connellsville plant.

On November 17, 2008, the Department of Labor ("DOL") issued new administrative regulations interpreting the provisions of the Family Medical Leave Act ("FMLA"). On the positive side, the new rules reflect new rights under the FMLA for military families and provide for up to six months leave for families of injured service members. Family members of active duty members of the National Guard and Reserve are allowed up to 12 weeks of FMLA leave for "qualifying exigencies," that include short-notice deployment; childcare; financial and legal arrangements; counseling and rest and recuperation. On the downside for workers, the new regulations require employees to follow their employer's call-in procedures for reporting absences when notifying employers of their need for leave when the prior regulations gave employees two days after requesting time off to notify the employer that the leave qualified under the FMLA. In addition, employers now have five days - instead of two days as the prior regulations provide - to decide whether to grant a request for FMLA leave. The new regulations also require employees taking "intermittent" leave to complete a "fitness for duty" evaluations before returning to work.

The new regulations take effect on January 16, 2009. President-Elect Obama, however, has indicated a desire to expand the protections affforded to working people under the FMLA so stayed tuned for further developments in this important area for workers and their families.

Hello and welcome to the new Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation Attorney Blog. My name is Gregory Kunkel and I am a partner with the law firm of Kunkel & Fink, LLP. With offices located in Uniontown and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, our firm provides legal representation to individuals throughout southwestern Pennsylvania in workers' compensation, social security disability, personal injury, and employment rights matters.

We created this Blog because we believe that knowledge is indeed power and our goal is to level the playing field for injured workers in Pennsylvania who have questions about their rights to workers' compensation benefits. Despite the name of our blog, we plan to discuss a variety of topics that will be of interest to workers in Pennsylvania, including injured workers' rights to social security disability benefits and employment rights laws prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, mandating overtime pay, and family medical leave for eligible employees. So, welcome aboard, and stayed tuned for more information.