When Gov. Murphy signed into law the Earned Sick Leave Act on May 2, 2018, N.J.S.A. 34:11D-1 to -11, New Jersey joined nine other states in providing the guarantee of paid sick time.  The purpose of the law was to protect the most vulnerable of NJ employees, including...

I was pleased this afternoon to receive the New Jersey District Court's decision granting the Motion to Dismiss that our firm filed on behalf of the Borough of Keansburg, its Chief of Police and governing body.  Keelen v. Keansburg et al., Civil Act...

When police officers are being investigated due to civilian complaints or for misconduct, an Internal Affairs ("IA") investigation is opened. These investigations are handled by trained IA professionals specifically assigned in each department. All of a police officer'...

In the world of labor law, written and verbal reprimands have always held a murky place in the disciplinary scale.  On the one hand, no one wants to be written up.  And reprimands can be used to show progressive discipline that will eventually lead to lost time (e.g. s...

Common sense dictates that a person can be identified through their initials, particularly when that person is a member of a discrete group such as the student body of a given school or school district.  It should not take a court decision to confirm this tautology, bu...

If you haven't been paying attention, the employment and labor law landscape has been rocked over the last several years by the renewed attention to the joint employer doctrine.  Although the doctrine and its test differs based upon the labor or employment statute in q...

In a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Smiley et al. v. E.J. DuPont De Nemours and Co. (Oct. 7, 2016), the court held that an employer was not permitted under the law to "offset" compensation it owes employees by crediting itself for f...

Few developments in New Jersey public sector labor law created more widespread confusion among administrators (and consternation among employees and unions) than Public Law 2011, Chapter 78 ("Chapter 78").  Chapter 78 is the source of the infamous four-year "grid" wher...

 On Friday, July 29, 2016, I had the privilege of speaking at Princeton University as part of the New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators' Conflict Resolution in the Workplace Seminar.  My fellow panelists included distinguished mediators Robert Margulies, Pat...

The unfortunate events which have dominated the headlines over the last few days highlight the growing divisions in our country between the police and those who they are sworn to protect.  In my considerable experience working with law enforcement, I have learned that...