Alaska Employment Law

Interviews of Alaska Supreme Court candidates: Gov. Palin interviews Supreme Court candidates in Juneau tomorrow and Friday.  The deadline for the appointment to fill Justice Bryner’s seat falls right after Thanksgiving. 

SH complaint procedure: Practical tips on drafting an effective sexual harassment complaint policy and procedure may be found at the Pennsylvania Employment Law Blog, and in this article at Ohio Employer’s Law Blog.  Monday’s post in Developments in EEO Law discusses an 8th Circuit case where the employer probably regrets its leniency in dealing with an alleged harasser.

Continued employment as acceptance of arbitration policy:  The 6th Circuit (majority and dissent) discusses whether an employee “accepts” an employer’s mandatory arbitration policy by continuing to work after notice of such policy.   Seawright v. Amer. Gen. Fin. Serv., Inc., No. 07-5091 (6th Cir. Nov. 13, 2007).  See also the scholarly articles by Richard Bales cited in Workplace Professor.

Resume fraud as a crime: The paralegal who pretended to be an attorney has pled guilty to grand larceny for receiving more than $200,000 in salary. 

Is electronic notice effective in the 9th Circuit?:  Yesterday the 9th Circuit reversed an order dismissing an action where the party had failed to appear for a show cause hearing after receiving only e-mail notice.  The Court of Appeals said:

Where [neither the Federal nor the Local] rules . . . authorize service by email, counsel has no obligation to check his email on a regular basis for possible orders from the court. He is entitled to assume that orders will be served by mail. When the rules change, so as to make electronic notice sufficient, counsel will then be on notice that they need to check their emails just as carefully as they now check their regular mail. Because plaintiff’s counsel was not on notice that orders would be served by email, he can’t be deemed to have received notice of the show cause hearing. Neither he nor his client may be sanctioned for his failure to attend the hearing.

The Court goes on to rap the District Court judge (Manuel Real, of the Central District of California):

The district judge’s unseemly haste in dismissing this case, and his failure to heed the perfectly plausible (and meritorious) explanation proffered by plaintiff in his motion for reconsideration, has cost the parties significant money and delay in pursuing this wholly unnecessary appeal. Justice suffers when judges act in such an arbitrary fashion. We apologize to the parties and admonish the district judge to exercise more care and patience in the future.

Calderon v. IBEW Local 47, No. 05-56937 (9th Cir. Nov. 13, 2007).