The U.S. Supreme Court extended the whistle-blower protections provided in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to include employees of privately held companies that are contractors or subcontractors of a public company. The high court’s ruling in Lawson v. FMR LLC, marks a significant expansion of the statute and opens the door for claims of a new class of workers from roughly 5,000 public companies to potentially 6 million private ones, including even the smallest “Mom and Pop” businesses.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished – Unpaid Internships Can Be Very Costly
The New Year is fast approaching and with it comes droves of college students seeking to trade their upcoming summer break for valuable on-the-job training. This rite of passage has traditionally afforded prized experience and training for a student or recent grad, while allowing the employer to review the temperament and talents of the student to determine if she would be a cultural fit for possible future employment opportunities, and all-the-while, promoting the employer’s brand and reputation at the collegiate level. However, a wave of wage-and-hour litigation brought by former unpaid interns has challenged to what extent for-profit employers will continue to have unpaid internships and how the surviving internship programs will be structured.