Arbitration agreements appear in several industries, automobile dealerships, online subscriptions and, of course, in many jobs. The employer will often ask a new employee to sign an arbitration agreement in their first few days of a new job. But, are all those arbitration agreements binding? In Mertens v. Benelux, the Fifth Circuit applied Texas
In Brown v. Child Advocates, Inc., No. 14-24-00012-CV, 2023 WL 2261414 (Tex.App. Hou. April 15, 2025), the court addresses a frequent issue in today’s courthouses: when are electronic signatures valid? In this matter, it appears the case did actually proceed to arbitration. Since, the employee submitted a motion to vacate the arbitration award. The
Motions to compel arbitration almost always succeed. One that did not was addressed in Parrott v. International Bank of Commerce, 778 F.Supp.3d 888 (W.D. Tex. 2025). In Parrott, the plaintiffs filed a class action regarding the employees’ profit-sharing plan. The proposed class sought to attack the investment strategy of IBC. Mr. Parrott left
An increasingly common employment agreement is one which requires the employee to forfeit a part of his/her salary if certain conditions are not met. In Rieves v. Buc-ee’s, 532 S.W.3d 845 (Tex.App. Hou. (14th District.) 2017), the Fourteenth Court of Appeals addressed one such agreement. In her agreement, Kelley Rieves agreed to give up
A frequent issue for employees in today’s workplaces is drug testing. All too often the drug testing laboratory makes a mistake. The lab mistakenly finds Joe Worker tested positive for cocaine. But, it is a false positive. What does Joe do? The Texas Supreme Court re-affirmed what it said in prior cases: Joe can do
On various social media platforms, we can express various emotions with emojis. Sad face means sad. Frowning means anger, dislike, etc. But, some emojis are less clear. What does a fire emoji mean? What does a winking face mean? Those emojis have slowly been creeping into caselaw. In 2004, an emoji was part of a
It is rare when a court overturns a motion to compel arbitration. In Brown v. Child Advocates, Inc., No. 14-24-00012-CV (Tex.App. Hou. April 15, 2025), the court did just that. Ms. Chiffon Brown filed suit claiming CAI fired her when she refused to perform illegal acts. The employer produced an arbitration agreement. But, Ms.
There are many pitfalls with forced arbitration. Georgia and John McGinty of New Jersey ran into one of those harsh pitfalls. The couple was injured in a crash of an Uber car. They sustained rib and spine fractures in March, 2022. Mrs. McGinty had lumbar and spine fractures. She had many surgeries and was unable
On Saturday afternoon, Pres. Musk sent an email to all or many Federal workers. His first email said all employees will receive an email soon. Failure to respond to that email will be seen as a resignation. Then came a second email asking all Federal employees to reply with a description of what they accomplished
The war on Federal workers continues. After the “Fork in the Road” email, the Musk/Trump next step has been to fire probationary employees. One estimate holds that there are 200,000 workers in their first year of Federal employment, making them probation employees. Many termination emails have been issued. A regular Federal employee can appeal any