One of the first things a company should do when it suspects that its trade secrets have been compromised or that an employee has violated post-employment restrictive covenants is to conduct an investigation. Doing so will identify and ensure preservation of evidence supporting any claims, and is critical to the ability to demonstrate the need for emergency injunctive relief, especially at a time when courts are taking a rigorous approach to what constitutes a “litigation emergency.” Conducting a prompt investigation also helps to avoid any potential defenses of delay, bad faith, or a failure to investigate.
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What To Do About Employee Thieves—Catch Them If You Can!
Cross Posted from California Peculiarities.
Seyfarth Synopsis: When employee theft occurs, employers must be cautious in investigating, avoiding self-help, and in deciding if and how to terminate the offending employee.
Companies work hard to hire trustworthy employees, but employee theft can occur in any business. Employee theft takes different shapes—you may discover an employee is stealing products, supplies, confidential information or money from the company; an employee may steal more surreptitiously by padding time on a time sheet; or an employee may intentionally fail to enter vacation time taken in order to get paid for that time when they quit. Whether subtle, or as brazen as a famous thief (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_Me_If_You_Can), any form of employee theft hurts your business and can present you with a difficult management situation.That’s why we’re here to help with the following tips.
1.“An Honest Man Has Nothing to Fear”—Background Checks:
Inquiring into an applicant’s history can be a useful tool to identify people with a propensity toward dishonesty, but if you use background checks, make sure you follow the rules about collection and use of information.
a) California law prohibits use of consumer credit reports for employment purposes except when hiring for certain specified positions, such as managers, peace officers, positions that involve regular access to personal and banking information of individuals, access to $10,000 or more of cash, or access to confidential or proprietary information of the employer. (Labor Code § 1024.5.)
b) State and local agencies (as well as employers in San Francisco and Richmond) cannot use information about criminal history unless and until a decision about the candidate’s minimum qualifications has already occurred. (See. e.g., Labor Code 432.9 and San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.)
c) In addition, under federal law, criminal history may not present an automatic barrier to employment; there must be a relationship between the criminal activity and the important elements of the job, and employers should consider the number of convictions, their nature and seriousness, how recent they are, and evidence of rehabilitation.Continue Reading What To Do About Employee Thieves—Catch Them If You Can!
We Traced The Trade Secret Leak … It’s Coming From Inside The Business
Cross Posted from California Peculiarities.
Seyfarth Synopsis: Protecting trade secrets from employee theft requires more than using an NDA when onboarding employees. If businesses want to protect confidential information, they need a cradle-to-grave approach, reiterating employee obligations regularly, including during exit interviews. (Yes, you need to do exit interviews!)
Headline stories in intellectual property theft tend to involve foreign
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Monitoring Employee Communications: A Brave New World
Over the last decade, communication via email and text has become a vital part of how many of us communicate in the workplace. In fact, most employees could not fathom the idea of performing their jobs without the use of email. For convenience, employees often use one device for both personal and work-related communications, whether that device is employee-owned or
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Loose Lips Sink Ships! Can an Employer Ask a Whistleblower to Keep Her Complaints “Confidential”?
By James Beyer
Hypothetical, based upon a real fact pattern: Sally works for a chair manufacturer and believes the chairs are made with unsafe and illegal toxins. Sally reports her concerns to the head of HR. Sally also says that she thinks her supervisor is “harassing” her for raising this with him because he gave her a bad performance rating.
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Illinois Supreme Court Affirms Liability Against Former Employer For Unlawful Investigation Methods Used By Private Investigators In Non-Competition Investigation Into Activities By Ex-Sales Agent
By Marcus Mintz
Recognizing the trend across Illinois appellate courts in recent years, the Illinois Supreme Court joined the “vast majority of other jurisdictions” in recognizing the tort of intrusion upon seclusion – a claim against one who intentionally intrudes upon another’s privacy if such intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person. In Lawlor v. North American Corporation
Continue Reading Illinois Supreme Court Affirms Liability Against Former Employer For Unlawful Investigation Methods Used By Private Investigators In Non-Competition Investigation Into Activities By Ex-Sales Agent