Can an employee make a wrongful discharge claim on the grounds that she was forced to quit?

Perhaps so-in a recent decision from the federal court in the Western District of Virginia, the court, anticipating how the Supreme Court of Virginia would rule on this issue, found that a plaintiff may be able to state a claim of wrongful discharge against his or her employer even where he or she resigned if […]

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Punitive Damages Allowed in Title VII Case Even Where Only Nominal Damages Awarded

Title VII allows both compensatory and punitive damages and there is a statutory cap that applies, depending upon the size of the employer ($300,000 in the case of employers with more than 500 employees). 42 U.S.C. § 1981a. In a sexual harassment case before the Ninth Circuit, the question was whether punitive damages are available […]

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Tenth Circuit Tackles Supervisor Issue

In Vance v. Ball State Univ., 133 S.Ct. 2434, 2441 (2013), the Supreme Court resolved a conflict among the circuits regarding what level of authority a harasser must have in order to qualify as a supervisor under Title VII in the context of a claim of sexual harassment.  However, there remain questions as to how […]

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