Sometimes, it pays to take the time and spend the money to have legal experts carefully review your proposed actions. That’s especially true if your company is changing the way it does business in a fundamental way and wants employees to sign off on changes that dramatically affect how they are paid or whether they remain employees.

A federal district court in New Jersey recently approved a settlement in an employment discrimination case where an employee received both front pay and back pay. Hashing out the settlement figure, however, was the easy part. Both sides were confused about how to treat the pay for tax purposes. Do IRS regulations consider both front pay and back pay to be wages?

Courts seldom second-guess firing decisions if employers can articulate solid reasons for the discharge—and take the time to document their decision-making processes. That’s because employees who want to challenge their employer’s termination decisions have to raise suspicions that the employer’s reason was not credible and that it wasn’t really a motivating factor in the decision.

Employees who take leave under the FMLA or the New Jersey Family Leave Act are entitled to return to the same or an equivalent position.

Here’s a bit of good news for employers: While class-action lawsuits have been all the rage in recent years, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to expand the types of cases that can become class-action claims when the ADA is at the heart of the case.

Employees whose supervisors sexually harass them have a fairly easy time winning their cases. But courts are much more lenient when the alleged harasser is a co-worker. That means employers can relax a little if an employee complains about a co-worker. Fortunately, the alleged harasser’s title isn’t the deciding factor. Instead, courts look to the actual job responsibilities.

It may be tempting to ignore rumors about racial or other hostility in the workplace. But you do so at the company’s peril—especially if some of that hostility is coming from a supervisor who has the power to hire and fire.

In an important victory for employers, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this summer that for employees to successfully bring lawsuits under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, they must now show that age discrimination was the cause of their termination or other adverse job action ...

If you’re an out-of-state company that makes New Jersey employees sign employment contracts requiring disputes to be brought in your home state, don’t expect that to stick.

When it comes to job sprawl, New Jersey has its own “Tale of Two Cities,” with urban communities in Northern Jersey doing better than their counterparts in Southern Jersey, according to the Brookings Institution report titled “Job Sprawl Revisited: The Changing Geography of Metropolitan Employment.”

Joseph Rivera, senior investigator for the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s Wage and Hour Division, pleaded guilty in a Camden courtroom to taking $1.86 million in bribes from temporary labor firms ...

Some employees think that taking FMLA leave gives them complete protection from disciplinary action. That just isn’t so. For example, when an employee takes FMLA leave, her work may have to be redistributed. If, during that process, you discover that the employee had been doing a poor job, you can take disciplinary action against her.

Confusing contract language did not cost a New Jersey car dealer millions of dollars, but in this economy, who can afford to lose even a little?

An Atlantic City jury has awarded Scott Jones $1.8 million in his suit against his former employer, South Jersey Gas, after the company dismissed him for poor work performance. Jones claimed his poor performance was due to his battle with depression and that the company failed to discuss accommodations of his condition.

When a new boss suddenly gives a lousy performance review to an employee who is used to getting good reviews, the employee may try to blame the change on the new supervisor’s alleged bias. Absent other evidence, that won’t prove discrimination in court.

In a pair of 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals cases, the court has made it clear that it has little tolerance for political appointees who clearly understand they serve at the pleasure of their elected officials and still sue when they are terminated, alleging some form of discrimination.

A court has ruled that employees who file harassment and discrimination lawsuits can’t tack on charges of negligent infliction of emotional distress. Instead, the court said emotional damage claims allegedly caused by negligence are the sole province of the New Jersey workers’ compensation system.

After the Record of Hackensack interviewed Ed Doherty, president of Doherty Enterprises, which owns about 80 Applebee’s restaurants in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, the paper posted the article online. The paper quoted Doherty as saying he treats employees “with dignity and respect” ... and that's where the trouble began.

The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination makes age discrimination illegal, but it also says “nothing herein shall be construed to bar an employer from refusing to accept for employment or to promote any person over 70 years of age.” Now a court has decided that exception doesn’t apply to continuing employment.

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that managers who actually supervise the work of subordinates have a duty to report sexual harassment when they learn of it. If they don’t, their employer can still be held liable.

All by itself, a negative performance review after an employee has taken FMLA leave doesn’t give the employee a reason to file a lawsuit. Unless the poor review is accompanied by something tangible—like a demotion or the loss of a pay increase—courts won’t see the review as retaliation.

As an employer, you’ve probably learned to ignore apparent disabilities because you could end up violating the ADA if you inquire about disabilities. That doesn’t mean, however, that you’ll run afoul of the law if you do something as simple as offering assistance to an applicant who is having trouble navigating stairs or getting on the elevator.

Public employers can’t punish employees for speaking out on matters of public importance. That doesn’t mean, however, that whatever an employee says is protected. One big exception involves speech when part of the employee’s job is to speak up about the topic. That’s not protected speech.

Employers that have anti-harassment policies and clearly communicate them already have a leg up. But the real winners are employers that also carefully track every harassment complaint. They increase their odds of winning harassment cases because they can show whether an employee complained about behavior when it happened.

Most applicants who aren’t hired just go away. But sometimes they don’t—and then it’s time to watch out! A rejected applicant can play the discrimination card, possibly costing you an expensive jury award. That’s one good reason to check your hiring practices for hidden bias.