Are BlackBerry Overtime Suits Coming?
Lawyers love and love to hate their BlackBerrys. So any ABAJournal.com post on the topic usually spurs debate.
But the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, referencing a recent National Law Journal story, asks whether the ubiquitous devices will fuel labor and employment litigation.
The speculation is that litigation could be “just around the corner,” with employees cashing in on the overtime hours they’ve spent monitoring work, responding to clients and assignments from supervisors.
“We’ll see it; it’s only a matter of time,” Jeremy Roth, a lawyer in the San Diego office of Littler Mendelson, is quoted saying. Roth says he tells clients to get policies in place, and now.
“Before there was at least an argument that no, the employee is not being truthful when they say, ‘I did all this work after hours.’ But now, that swearing contest is taken out of the mix,” Roth says.
