Kudos to Jim Kaster at Minneapolis’ Nichols Kaster for his big win at the U.S. Supreme Court today in Kasten v. St. Gobain Performance Plastics.  The Court ruled that the Fair Labor Standard Act’s anti-retaliation provision protects an employee who allegedly lost his job because he made verbal complaints to his employer.

Section 215(a)(3) of the FLSA prohibits retaliation against an employee who has “filed any complaint” regarding purported wage and hour violations.  Lower courts had interpreted this to mean that the complaint must have been written.  But the Supreme Court ruled that the statute protects oral complaints as well :  “To fall within the scope of the anti-retaliation provision, a complaint must be sufficiently clear and detailed for a reasonable employer to understand it, in light of both content and context, as an assertion of rights protected by the statute and a call for their protection. This standard can be met, however, by oral complaints, as well as by written ones.”

Justice Breyer authored the 6-2 majority opinion. Not surprisingly,  Justice Scalia wrote a dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justice Thomas. Justice Kagan took no part in the decision

Kirkeberg had sued the railroad for disability discrimination after his position was eliminated.  We argued that there was no evidence of discrimination and that the position elimiation was based on legitimate business concerns.  The Court agreed with us that the plaintiff could not show he was disabled under the ADA and the MHRA because his vision problems and hepatitis did not substantially limit his major life activities. Significantly, it rejected the “conclusory” claims that he made in a post-deposition affidavit about how his conditions impacted him. The Court also refused to accept his argument that the Railroad had “regarded” him as disabled. 

Plaintiff had also alleged that he was retaliated against for his disability, but the Court concluded that because he had not engaged in any “protected activity”, there was no retaliation.

The case does not break any new ground, but it provides some helpful analysis for employers facing disability discrimination claims.

When asked to predict the outcome of their cases, lawyers are often too optimistic, according to a survey published this month in the American Psychological Association’s Psychology, Public Policy & Law.

Shockingly, male attorneys were generally more overconfident than their female peers, and the more confident the lawyer, the more likely he would fall short of his predicted outcome.

Specifically, the study asked two questions of 481 American lawyers representing plaintiffs and defendants in cases expected to go to trial within a year. First, they were asked, “What would be a win situation in terms of your minimum goal for the outcome of this case?” Second, they were asked how confident they were of achieving the goal set in their first answer, on a scale of 0 to 100.  When the researchers conducted follow-up interviews, they found that 32 percent of the lawyers met their goals, 24 percent exceeded their goals and 44 percent were less successful than predicted.

The research also found that the accuracy of lawyers’ predictions about case outcomes was not improved by years of experience.  In fact,  many of the most overconfident lawyers were senior partners who do not typically seek out feedback.

One good idea:  ”Practitioners should also consider regularly obtaining customer feedback by sending their clients anonymous survey questionnaires at the close of every case; these should include questions that target the issues surrounding the management of client expectations about the achievement of goals in a particular case.”

Here is a great little story about a car mechanic going the extra mile (pun intended).  Treat your clients well, because what goes around comes around.

Apparently, its all about trust.