workplace - challenges and trends

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1. What challenges and trends do you see in your workplace relating to employment law?

In healthcare, for example, it is often difficult for the physician to keep up with the routines of daily practice and to stay current with the ever-changing health care landscape that has prevailed in the last few years. An area that may rival health care in its torrent of changing rules and laws is that of employment law. While its impact may be more indirect than changes in health care on the daily operations of a medical practice, personnel or employment laws are just as pervasive, since the physician group is an "employer" as well as a health care business. Also working against the physician group in the employment law arena is the perception that the medical practice is a "small" employer and so is exempt from many of the federal and state laws governing employees. This vision is outdated in an age where practices are merging in order to stay viable. As groups consolidate, the numbers of employees grow and so do the applicable employment laws. http://www.physiciansnews.com/law/599mackarey.html
The trend toward verdicts and high compensation payments
For example, in many areas of employment law, verdicts appear to continue to soar, with juries returning verdicts in excess of $1 million. Despite these statistics, recent studies indicate that the overall trend is to the contrary. That is, many cases are being decided in favor of the employer, not the employee. Reasons for the change vary. Some speculate that jurors are more cynical. Others feel that the difficult cases are settled, and only the strong, clear cases end up going to trial, where the employer is more likely to prevail. However, these reversals do not hold true with sexual harassment cases. Both the number of cases and the amounts of the verdicts are still on the increase. For example, in 1991, there were about 3300 sexual harassment claims brought nationally and 130 in the Philadelphia area. In 1997, the claims soared to approximately 9000 on a national level, and just over 300 in the Philadelphia area. This increase is also significantly when you consider that other discrimination claims (race, religion and other types of sexual discrimination) remained steady. In addition, there have been more and more big awards. For example, there was an award last year in the Philadelphia area that exceeded two million dollars. http://www.physiciansnews.com/law/599mackarey.html
This upward trend is not likely to stop. Last summer, for example, the United States Supreme Court created a new legal standard that imposes liability for sexual harassment by supervisors in the workplace when the victim ...