Martha Doty will Co-Chair this conference hosted by the American Conference Institute (ACI). The volume of employment discrimination litigation has increased over the last few years with no signs of slowing down. The cases are complex and the stakes involved for defendants are high. The best plaintiff attorneys are involved in these cases and the defense bar is seeing more and more class actions and collective claims. In defending and managing these complex claims, counsel for management face a distinct uphill battle. As a result of this uphill battle, there is no room for error in the defense of these claims. The conference will provide expert defense strategies for leading outside counsel and in-house consel on litigating today's key issues involved in representing management.
During the conference, Martha will present "Retaliation Claims: Why Claims Are Getting Higher Exposure Than Ever Before and How to Work Toward Dismissal" on December 8, 1:15pm - 2:15pm. Her panel will discuss the following topics.
- The continued expansion of retaliation claims: What constitutes protected activity and/or adverse action?
- Retaliation and whistleblower claims under an array of federal and state statutes and common law causes of action, including the recently enacted ARRA stimulus package
- The impact of the Supreme Court opinion in Burlington: Dealing with the new, lower, standard for retaliation claims to survive summary judgment
- Overcoming the difficulties in defending retaliation claims because of the law and the nexus/causal connection issues to protected activity
- Easy to plead, difficult to dispose of: To what extent have defense counsel succeeded at summary judgment?
- Countering the usage of discrimination and whistleblower claims as precursors to retaliation claims
- Keeping what might be an easy to address discrimination claim from becoming a difficult retaliation claim
- Retaliation accompanying a discrimination claim: Defending against a remaining retaliation claim when the underlying discrimination or harassment claim is found to be without merit or specious
- Defending retaliation claims brought by current (rather than former) employees
- Overcoming the problematic fact of temporal proximity between a complaint or EEOC charge and a subsequent adverse action or termination
- Jury appeal of retaliation claims: How to overcome people’s belief that its natural to want to retaliate when someone has made allegations against you - even if they were unfounded
- Dealing with and defending retaliation claims that were filed solely to protect an otherwise poor performer or when the plaintiff has a demonstrable history of prior complaints
December 8-9, 2010
Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf / San-Francisco, CA