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Lawsuit of the Day: Associate Takes Firm to Court Over Deferred Pay

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Well, it’s about time. On April 13th, a small claims court in Florida will deal with a case where an associate is suing his former law firm over allegedly deferred compensation. Only $2,000 is at issue, but this is a battle of principle. The Daily Business Review (subscription) sets it up:

The salary deferral imposed by [Becker & Poliakoff] in May 2008 was temporary and necessary in order to avoid layoffs during the economic downturn, managing partner Alan Becker said….

Former Becker associate Richard Valuntas sued the firm last August, alleging Becker committed breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation by refusing to repay him the 12 percent deducted from his paycheck for several months. He also alleges Becker’s deferrals violated its own employment contract and policy manual.

You see, the firm promised restitution of the salary cut, and they did eliminate the cut in August of 2008 and gave associates make-whole payments. But only associates still at the firm received full restitution. Valuntas left Becker that August and apparently missed out on one of these restitution paychecks.

Despite the small amount of money involved, both litigants are going to the mattresses…

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Gay Justice Could Be Coming

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When I first read this headline on the ABA Journal this morning, I became very excited:

Poll Finds 55% Would Support Openly Gay Justice

Gay Justice? How awesome! Justice is way too straight. Basic black letter laws and stuffy proceedings. It’d be far more exciting and visually interesting if Lady Justice was a little bit more… flamboyant. I’ve been to gay Halloween and it’s a lot more fun.

Sadly, my hopes for plastering pink triangles on courthouses were dashed when I actually clicked on the link. A Vanity Fair/CBS News poll found that 55% of Americans would support an openly gay Supreme Court justice, while 40% of those polled would oppose an openly gay SCOTUS nominee. That’s boring. All that shows is that 40% of poll respondents are raging homophobes. I’m pretty sure we didn’t need Vanity Fair to tell us that.

The only question is whether Obama will enrage the anti-gay people with his next SCOTUS nominee…

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