Video Transcript:
Hi, I’m Kraig Marton and I do employment law here in the firm.
Why do you Call Employment Law Alphabet Soup?
Employers have to know so much when they’re engaged in the field of employment law and there’s so many acronyms that are used that just learning them becomes difficult. There’s things like FMLA, there is USERRA there is COBRA, there is HIPAA, one can go on. Now there’s the ACA, some call it Obama care. Just keeping track of the initials for the laws is hard, much less keeping track of the actual laws that govern the employment relationship.
Which Types of Employers are More Susceptible to get Sued?
What I find is that an employer with 50 to 100 employees whose grown fast because it was a family-run business, are those who are most likely to get sued and the reason for that is they grew fast and the controller or the sister is handling the HR functions instead of an HR professional. And so what happens is that if you’re not familiar with all of the laws that govern employment law, you’re gonna make a misstep.
Why Should an Arizona Employer be Proactive?
You know, the cost of a lawsuit these days is tens, probably hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend when an employer gets sued and it’s a no-win proposition for the employer because if the employer loses, they not only have to pay the other side’s attorneys’ fees, they also have to pay whatever damages the jury assesses. On the other hand, if the employer wins, almost for sure, they don’t get back their attorneys’ fees, nor do they get back any real benefit other than vindication. And so what occurs is the cost of a lawsuit can be tremendous in administrative costs, in financial costs and just in morale and so if an employer pays attention to employment law in advance, and does things right and follows the law and treats employees fairly, they’re not going to get sued. Proactive is the way to go.