More and more, employers are forcing workers to give up their constitutional rights to seek justice in our nation’s courts. Instead of seeing their day in court, workers may be sidelined into “arbitration.” This means a private individual or “arbitrator” can decide a civil litigation case outside of court, without a judge or jury. Arbitration […]

On November 20, 2018, the Virginia Supreme Court appointed a panel of three Circuit Court judges to consider the consolidation of lawsuits previously filed in Virginia state courts against opioid manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) for their role in creating the public health emergency caused by prescription opioids. The panel was appointed in […]

America is experiencing an opioid epidemic that has resulted in economic, social and emotional damage to virtually every community in the United States and tens of thousands of Americans. It is indiscriminate and ruthless, and kills 175 Americans every day. In 2016, more than 64,000 people died of drug overdoses (and the majority of these […]

One of the biggest barriers to abuse victims’ pursuit of justice in Maryland is the strict time limits that victims have to file their claims (this is commonly called the “statute of limitations”). While research consistently demonstrates that most survivors of sexual abuse fail to report or disclose the abuse until they are at least […]

The #MeToo Movement has helped draw attention to abuse victims’ right to pursue civil claims against the perpetrators who abused them and the institutions (e.g., churches, child care centers, schools, universities, colleges, teams, and programs) who failed to protect them from being abused. The voices of survivors are growing. Still, abuse victims have not yet […]

In the landmark civil rights decision Brown v. Board of Education, the court ruled that racial segregation in the public schools was unconstitutional. But if the Plaintiffs in Brown had been subject to an arbitration agreement with their schools, public schools might still be segregated today. Today women do not have to tolerate hostile conduct […]

On March 23, 2018, the Supreme Court of California reversed its previous position and held that “universities have a special relationship with their students and a duty to protect them from foreseeable violence during curricular activities.” The Facts of the Case In Regents of the University of California v. Rosen, a student at UCLA, Katherine […]

Finance professionals, executives, sales people, pharmaceutical professionals, information technology professionals, and others today face an increased number of employer-issued restrictions on their right to continue working after they leave their job. For employees, these provisions, often called “non-competes” can have devastating consequences. Read to the letter, these provisions may purport to stop employees from working […]

At Sanford Heisler Sharp we cover many of the hurdles that women face in the workplace. In addition to on-the-job issues, women can face discrimination in how they are treated following a workplace injury. According to recent news reports, Californian women who apply for workers’ compensation following an injury on the job receive lower compensation […]