Why is there usually a six month time limit for bringing disability discrimination actions to court? Kester Disability Rights note in a blog post of 25 Jun (page 6) that There is usually a six month time limit to get your case to court. What provision might they be referring to and where can I read more about it?
This is probably refering to the time limit at Section 118 of the Equality Act 2010. Subject to some exceptions, proceedings on a claim within section 114 may not be brought after the end of... the period of 6 months starting with the date of the act to which the claim relates ... Sonia Birdee (barrister) has shared some slides on the topic: Limitation in Equality Act 2010 claims (non-employment). She describes the general limitation period and also presents some ways of potentially getting more time.
Yes, the statute of limitations in New York can toll if a person is out of state for a long period of time. See CVP § 207. Defendant's absence from state or residence under false name: If, when a cause of action accrues against a person, he is without the state, the time within which the action must be commenced shall be computed from the time he comes into or returns to the state. If, after a cause of action has accrued against a person, that person departs from the state and remains continuously absent therefrom for four months or more, or that person resides within the state under a false name which is unknown to the person entitled to commence the action, the time of his absence or residence within the state under such a false name is not a part of the time within which the action must be commenced. If an action is commenced against a person described above, the time within which service must be made on such person in accordance with subdivisions (a) and (b) of section three hundred six-b of this chapter shall be computed in accordance with this section. This section does not apply: 1. while there is in force a designation, voluntary or involuntary, made pursuant to law, of a person to whom a summons may be delivered within the state with the same effect as if served personally within the state; or 2. while a foreign corporation has one or more officers or other persons in the state on whom a summons against such corporation may be served; or 3. while jurisdiction over the person of the defendant can be obtained without personal delivery of the summons to the defendant within the state.
There is no clear answer, though multiple sources feel that the answer is clearly &quot;yes&quot; and &quot;no&quot;, and there is a reasonable probability that given the circumstances described, a court ruling would be favorable to plaintiff. This informal letter from the EEOC tends to conclude that sleep apnea is not a disability in the legal sense, but this letter (2003) was rescinded – still, it reveals one line of thinking and relevant case law. In Michaels v. McPherson Kansas, the appellate court refers to and upholds a lower court ruling that plaintiff suffered employment discrimination under the ADA (among other things). The appeal does not discuss the core issue in ADA law, whether the condition significantly limits a person's life, which strongly suggests that defendant accepted the conclusion that sleep apena can be a disability. On the other hand, in Taylor v. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, a discrimination case involving sleep apnea was dismissed – but crucial to the dismissal was that he was successfully treated (also relevant was the lack of notice given the the employer). Finally, in Keyes v. Catholic Charities, federal court found that plaintiff's condition was not a disability under the meaning of the term in ADA. This does not mean that sleep apnea is &quot;not a disability under the law&quot;, it means that &quot;defendant is not disabled under the law&quot;, that is, the conclusion is based on the particulars of the individual condition, which is why the answer is &quot;maybe yes, maybe no&quot;. There is a two-prong inquiry into the condition. First is a determination whether the person is “substantially limited in any major life activity other than working, such as walking, seeing, or hearing”, compared to the general population. If not, then an inquiry into work-related substantial limitations. A six month delay in seeking treatment undermined Keyes' argument that his condition was a substantial limitation, furthermore he had a CPAP machine, so essentially his condition was fixed – circumstances not application to the case you describe. See also Peter v. Lincoln Technical Institute, Inc., 255 F. Supp. 2d 417 for various citations and the overall conclusion that no court in this circuit appears to have decided whether sleep apnea is, on its own, enough to qualify as a disability, probably because &quot;a particular diagnosis, no matter how severe, ..., standing alone, is not sufficient to establish `disability'&quot;
I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this law; rather, I think this question shows a misconception of the way the legal system works in general. Here's the question: do you actually have "legally privileged" material on your phone? If not, what's keeping you from claiming that is that it's not true, and lying to a police officer is a bad idea. And just putting a letter from your lawyer on the phone doesn't mean you've established a legal privilege--attorney-client privilege is not a magic spell, it's a reasonable system of protection that only covers certain communications. The bottom line is: the statute in general, and that clause in particular, were included in the law to protect real, important, and substantial legal right. The courts interpret the law in light of that purpose. If the police officer finds a solution that protects your rights while still carrying out the purpose of the statute, the court will be unlikely to fault him or her. In this case, if you tell the officer that there is a letter from your attorney in a particular folder, the obvious solution is for the officer not to open that folder. Problem solved. In practice, in the United States at least, these cases are dealt with routinely; computers are seized, and attorneys and judges work together to ensure that privilege is protected while still allowing reasonable access to seized materials. I would imagine the same is true in the U.K. The bottom line is: the law is not a game, and technical "gotchas" are rarely effective. Common law systems allow judges enough leeway to avoid this sort of pointless technicality.
In principle, the data subject's right to access involves a copy of all personal data the controller holds on them. There are no time limits by default. Of course, the controller can ask a data subject to clarify their request, e.g. to focus on a particular time frame. There is an implied time limit though: personal data may only be processed/stored for as long as the data is necessary to achieve the purposes for which it was collected. Afterwards, it must be deleted. A controller with good data management will be able to limit their effort by having as short retention periods as possible for their different records. Furthermore, a lot of data is not personal data, or falls out of scope of the GDPR because it is not processed with automated means or forms part of a filing system. For example, if thousands of old invoices were archived in paper form in boxes that are only sorted by year, there might be an argument that this isn't a filing system in the sense of the GDPR and that a DSAR would not have to involve looking through all the archived invoices (compare also Art 11). In your scenario, there is a clear retention period of six years. You are asking for records about how that data might have been used further in the past. To the degree that such data is actually available, that could reasonably be personal data and should be included in a response to a DSAR. E.g. they might have information like this: “File #1234 was included in a data set that was sold to EvilCorp in 2007. The entries in File #1234 that are older than 2014 have been purged, so we do not know which entries were included in the data set. The current name on File #1234 is Dave.” This information about the sale would be personal data because it relates to you, and you are identifiable. Of course, the controller might not be set up to perform this search unless specifically asked. However, more unspecific information might not be personal data. For example: “About 70% of our files were included in a data set that was sold to EvilCorp in 2007. We no longer have records indicating whether your file was included.” Since there is no link between the sale and your personal data, I don't think it would have to be included in a DSAR response. The primary reason why you should be told about sales of personal data is that per Art 15(1)(c), you should be informed about “the recipients or categories of recipient to whom the personal data have been or will be disclosed” in a DSAR response. So when making a data subject access request, it could make sense to explicitly referencing this paragraph. So you would be interested in receiving a copy of your personal data as per Art 15 GDPR, and in particular any available information per Art 15(1)(c) GDPR about the recipients or categories of recipients to whom your personal data has been or may have been disclosed in the past. Quite likely the response will be underwhelming, e.g. by just giving a broad category such as “potential creditors who are contractually obligated to use the data only in accordance with our policies”. Whether such responses are compliant (I don't necessarily think so) will not be clear until there's a good precedent, and that would require that someone sorts this out in court.
Would a U.S court honor his request, based on his prior commitment? You are not specifying the purpose of the court hearing, or whether Adam is pro se litigant (which sounds unlikely if this plaintiff is a movie star). If plaintiff Adam is represented by an attorney, Adam's presence is unnecessary in most or all court hearings. In fact, typically neither parties nor their lawyers have to show up in court, whence their absence does not constitute contempt of court. Absence merely implies that they miss the opportunity to [orally] argue their position before the court, and thus would depend on whether the judge bothers to actually read their brief. If you mean a hearing in which Adam needs to be present, his request to reschedule the hearing is most likely to be granted. His contract is strong evidence that his request is not a vexatious attempt to delay proceedings. Since the hearing would be in month 4, the particularity that his contract goes up to month 4 implies that rescheduling would not significantly delay proceedings. Regarding your comment, rescheduling can (and does) happen multiple times even in criminal cases. This post includes an excerpt of the Register of Actions of criminal case 16-870-FH in Michigan state court (Washtenaw county), highlighting several instances of rescheduling as requested by the defense counsel and despite prosecutor's objection. I believe the case got rescheduled a few more times beyond what the snapshots reflect.
Let's say that the mediation doesn't succeed to achieve voluntary compliance satisfactory to both sides. What happens next? Under Sec 706(e) it appears that the complainant has to litigate himself in a civil court, and potentially be exempt from any fees and have an appointed attorney. Not really. The EEOC at that point (within a certain time period) either decides to litigate the case itself, or if it chooses not to litigate itself, authorizes the employee to litigate the case at his or her own expense, and if the employee prevails, the remedy awarded by the Court includes what the court determines to be the employees reasonable attorneys' fees. The details of the process and the relevant deadlines are available at the EEOC's website. Basically, if the case isn't resolved in mediation, the employer makes a position statement, the employee responds, the EEOC investigates (using its subpoena power, if necessary) on average for ten months, and the EEOC either prosecutes the case itself, or it issues a "Notice-Of-Right-To-Sue" which allows the private employee to hire a lawyer and sue the employer. How often does it actually happen? The EEOC handles about 90,000 charges per year and wins about $525 million a year in judgments and settlement awards (parallel agencies at the state level handle additional cases in a similar manner). The vast majority of the cases are settled or result in a Notice of Right To Sue letter, with only 100 to 400 lawsuits per year actually filed by the agency resulting in $22 million to $168 million a year of awards in court cases. About 25% of these cases go to trial. The rest settle before trial or are resolved in motion practice before trial (including default judgments, when the employer simply doesn't respond to the lawsuit). Once the EEOC brings a lawsuit, settlement is the most common resolution. So, there are a lot of cases, although there is only about one EEOC claim per 1,000 employees in the workforce subject to EEOC jurisdiction per year. Whether this is a lot of complaints or not many, is really a matter of opinion. Only about one in twenty-five people will ever file an EEOC claim in his or her entire life, although this will vary considerably based upon a person's race, national origin, religion and sex. A non-Hispanic white Christian male of European descent is much less likely to file an EEOC claim during his lifetime than someone who does not fit that description. Realistically, a majority of cases that aren't abandoned by the employee in the administrative process (which is a significant share of the total) or found to have no factual basis (a small but significant percentage) are settled for fairly modest dollar amounts (an average of about $10,000 to $20,000 per claim). The bigger dollar cases for a single employee usually end up being brought in a private lawsuit rather than by the EEOC itself. About 14,000 of those charges each year result in a Notice of Right to Sue letter followed by a civil lawsuit filed by a lawyer for the employee. It isn't terribly easy to determine from official statistics what proportion of cases resulting in a Notice of Right to Sue letter rather than an EEOC lawsuit ultimately do not result in a lawsuit being filed by the employee. About 250 of these cases (not quite 2%) go to trial each year. The rest settled or are resolved in motion practice before trial (including default judgments, when the employer simply doesn't respond to the lawsuit). Once an employee brings a lawsuit, settlement is the most common resolution. Folk wisdom in the employment litigation field is that the average settlement of a case of ordinary strength on the merits that is settled fairly early on in the process is about six months of wages. An estimate that the employees in private lawsuits secured more than $200 million a year in settlements and money judgments is probably a gross underestimate. It could easily be $500 million to $1 billion per year. But, there are no good statistics available since settlement amounts are overwhelmingly confidential. The EEOC sues on behalf of the employee in cases it chooses to litigate itself on a weekly basis, and likewise declines to prosecute and certifies the case to allow the individual to prosecute the case with a private attorney all the time. Is there any relevant case law? Yes. Pretty much every relevant detail of the process has been litigated in case law that has produced reported decisions because there have been many thousands of employment discrimination cases litigated under the Act. There are probably at least two dozen to four dozen new published appellate decisions in the federal circuit courts each year on these kinds of cases, if not more, and those decisions have come at a pretty steady rate for the past half century. There are hundreds of published decisions interpreting these statutes in almost every one of the federal circuits. On quite a few issues, there are splits of authority between different circuits regarding how to interpret the law that will ultimately be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court, or by Congress, or that may remain unresolved forever. How will the civil court try the case? Will the judge reference the Civil Rights Directly? It is a little unclear what you are asking here, but I will do my best. Regardless of whether the EEOC or the individual employee brings the case, it is filed as a Complaint in federal court like any other federal lawsuit, litigated according to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and resolved in the vast majority of cases either by a judge in a pre-trial motion, by a settlement between the parties, or by a jury trial presided over by a judge. In a jury trial, the judge tells the jury what the applicable law says and the jury decides if the employee has proved a case against the employer when applying that law after hearing the evidence presented at trial and then decides what damages award to make, on a very short jury verdict form. In a bench trial (i.e before a judge without a jury), the judge makes those determinations in a lengthy written ruling setting forth the factual and legal basis for the judge's determination on the merits. Jury trials are much more common than bench trials in these kinds of cases, partially because plaintiffs want juries to make a damages determination, and partially out of a perception (not entirely inaccurate) that judges tend to be pro-employer on average. What is a likely punishment? Punishment is mostly the wrong term. It is a lawsuit for money damages to compensate the employee for harm actually suffered. The jury (or the judge if the case can be decided before trial in a motion for summary judgment or if a jury trial has been waived) determines the amount of compensation, if any, which should be awarded for lost wages, non-economic compensatory damages, etc. and the judge then awards attorneys' fees and court costs based upon the submissions of the parties after the trial is over based upon a determination of what is allowed by law and what is reasonable. To some extent, an employer's obligation to pay attorneys' fees and costs acts as a proportionate punishment for not immediately settling a case where the employer is found to be in the wrong. To some extent, non-economic damages can constitute a punishment. But, when an employer is found to have discriminated intentionally, which is most of the time, punitive damages can also be awarded, although they must be proportionate to the amount of actual compensatory damages awarded, typical one or two times the compensatory damage award unless that award is very small. Statutory liquidated damages are sometimes awarded in lieu of certain kinds of punitive and compensatory damages awards in age and sex discrimination cases under the Equal Pay Act. There are also dollar limits on awards based upon the size of the employer. Why is the process convoluted by adding an extra step in form of the commission? Mediation is allowed as a compromise to encourage negotiated resolutions that avoid litigation costs before everyone has spent a lot of money on lawyers. In practice, a surprisingly large number of cases result in pre-trial mediation resolutions, often in cases where an outcome if the case had gone forward to a trial would have been uncertain. The involvement of the Commission is a compromise between having a system where all cases are prosecuted at state expenses and one in which all cases are brought privately with an opportunity to win attorneys' fees if one prevails. The EEOC has usually used its authority to bring cases that are clearly cases of improper employer conduct where due to the small dollar amounts involved or the number of employees affected, an individual lawsuit would not provide an adequate remedy since private lawsuits would not be brought otherwise. It is very hard for a private attorney to justify bringing an employment discrimination lawsuit over a case where the damages are likely to be in the $5,000 to $25,000 range because the employee doesn't make much money unless liability is 100% clear (e.g. there is an admission on videotape from the employer), despite the fact that a prevailing party can get non-economic damages, punitive damages, attorneys' fees and costs. So, it is particularly hard to bring employment discrimination cases on behalf of employees who don't earn much even when they aren't discriminated against. The availability of EEOC enforcement prevents employers of low wage workers and workers in temporary employment whose damages are small from ignoring the Civil Rights laws with impunity. A private lawyer does something on the order of $30,000 to $150,000 of billable work to bring an employment discrimination case involving a single employee-client to trial, and a lawyer defending such a case for an employer will typically incur more legal fees for their employer client than the employee's lawyers do, while the employer's lawyer defends the case all of the way through a trial, even before considering any amounts actually awarded to a prevailing employee in a case where the employee wins. Each side's legal fees, individually, will usually exceed the amount of compensatory and punitive damages awarded combined in a fairly small dollar case for an employee who wasn't paid very much, or at least didn't lose a huge amount of money economically due to illegal discrimination (for example, because the employee wasn't promoted while a less qualified candidate was promoted). This is an important reason why lots of cases settle and why the EEOC is necessary. The EEOC process also provides a means by which arbitration agreements with individual employees can be circumvented because the EEOC is not a party to those agreements and is not bound by them. Why isn't discrimination simply prosecuted by the state's attorney? After all racial discrimination very much fits the definition of a public wrong. Government agency resources aren't unlimited, so the government can't prosecute every credible complaint, so the EEOC has to pick and choose how to get the most bang for its available resources. In practice, the EEOC can only afford to pursue about one in ten of the employment discrimination cases subject to its jurisdiction that go to trial with its own lawyers. The cases it can't afford to bring, it delegates to the private sector rather than simply leaving those cases unprosecuted as would happen in the criminal justice system. This also provides a way for an employee who has a lazy or unenthusiastic government lawyer assigned to their case at the EEOC who doesn't take what the employee sees as a strong case seriously a way to get relief for employment discrimination despite the fact that the EEOC isn't willing to back them up. Private lawsuits are a check and balance against bad EEOC decisions about how strong cases are as well as a way for the EEOC to avoid financing the legal fees of people who can afford to sue on their own. Is the enforcement any good? Lots of employees over the years have gotten lots of money, although probably not 100% of the amount of the economic harm they suffered (and, of course, employee and employer attorneys have gotten paid a lot of money in the process as well, which is good if you are a lawyer, but is dead weight loss from an economist's point of view). But, more importantly, the behavior of employers has changed greatly as a result. In practice, most lawsuits, and almost all lawsuits not brought by the EEOC itself, involve either wrongful termination or failure to promote someone, rather than discriminatory hiring, since it is hard to show an individual right to be hired for which an individual is entitled to compensation. Even in EEOC cases, most are brought for discriminatory advertising or openly admitted discrimination in hiring, rather than covert discrimination by an employer in hiring on a non-permitted basis. The EEOC brings a handful of cases alleging covert discrimination in hiring against medium or large employers each year, in part, just to provide a credible threat to anyone considering doing so, often with a combination of tips from insiders (particularly those from hiring officials who are fired in retaliation for not following a discriminatory hiring policy) and with undercover "test applicants" who submit functionally identical resumes for the same job when many job openings are available. But, this is usually a tiny share of the total volume of employment litigation brought under the Civil Rights Acts. There is a certain irony in this, because employers who are willing to hire someone who belongs to a "protected class" in the first place, who hence, are probably not the most discriminatory employers in the market, are more exposed to a realistic risk of a discrimination lawsuit, than employers who refuse to hire anyone in a "protected class" in the first place, so long as the employer keeps its mouth shut about this practice and is willing to lie and come up with false pretexts for its actions. Dishonest gross racists and clear misogynists are under punished, while less culpable employers who are more honest but still a little bit discriminatory in the cases of a few well paid employees are over punished relative to more culpable employers. Also, employment discrimination laws provide the most monetary compensation to the most competent and well paid employees who probably have the greatest capacity to mitigate their damages by seeking other employment from less discriminatory employers, while providing the least compensation to the marginal employees for whom discrimination in employment most impacts their quality of life. Indeed, often the most marginal employees aren't even willing to risk filing a complaint with the EEOC for fear of being blacklisted in the future in a manner that is impossible to prove. Still, at a minimum, by making it illegal to publicly state a discriminatory reason or to state a discriminatory reason to someone who could testify against you in court, the laws in question have changed the internal normative standards that managers of medium and large sized business apply on a day to day business such that at least lip service and public commitment is given to the requirements of the civil rights laws. This change in corporate culture has probably had more of a real world effect than actual suits for damages have in regard to discrimination in hiring. The benefits of the voluntarily discontinuation of discrimination in employment as employers internalized the norms established by the civil rights laws for the most part has provided far more benefit to employees who were previously discriminated against than litigation and settlements resulting from the EEOC process. For example, when Sandra Day O'Connor (future Supreme Court justice) was a young lawyer, fewer than 5% of attorneys were women and she was often mistaken for a secretary or receptionist by clients. Now, about half of all young associate lawyers (even at very large firms who graduated from very prestigious law schools) are women. Almost all of this change was due to a change in professional norms that were a direct result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (women had legally been allowed to be lawyers since the 1920s almost everywhere and earlier in some places), rather than through case by case litigation. The Civil Right Act opened up a huge new lucrative profession to women and minorities, and the experience of the legal profession was the norm and not the exception. Before the act, women were pretty much limited to school teaching, being librarians, nursing, secretary work, food service, day care, piece work sewing and laundry work. After the Civil Rights Act, their employment opportunities dramatically increased. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is likewise, more or less single handedly, responsible for today's black middle class which would have been an order of magnitude smaller otherwise. There are economic arguments that discrimination laws do or do not do much good, but those arguments rarely consider the fact that the law, when it was first enacted, dramatically changed corporate culture and the moral viewpoints and norms of the middle and upper middle class who act as employers making hiring decisions across the nation. Until the Civil Rights Act was enacted, tradition and prejudice kept a huge share of the population out of most of the marketplace in a manner completely contrary to what a naive Economics 101 analysis would predict.
Note that while a person can request a specific accommodation, an employer or potential employer is not required to grant the specific accommodation requested. Some other accommodation which (the employer claims) will meet the expressed need can be offered instead. Also no accommodation need be offered if it would impose an &quot;undue burden&quot; on the employer. The normal expectation is that there will be a back-and forth until the employee (or applicant) and the employer agree on an appropriate accommodation. Where there is agreement but the agreement is then violated, the normal first response is to make such adjustments as will restore the agreed accommodation. Only if that fails will a legal complaint be heard. There is no automatic penalty for violation of an accommodation agreement, it will depend on the facts ass assessed by the Commission and perhaps later by a court. Possible penalties can include an order to employ or reinstate a complainant, back pay, costs and legal fees, and money damages, which can be up to $75,000 per violation, as the court deems just. The relevant law is 42 U.S. Code § 12112. This provides (in relevant part): No covered entity shall discriminate against a qualified individual on the basis of disability in regard to job application procedures, the hiring, advancement, or discharge of employees, employee compensation, job training, and other terms, conditions, and privileges of employment. The section goes on to define “discriminate against a qualified individual on the basis of disability” as including any of several acts, including: (b) (5) (A) not making reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability who is an applicant or employee, unless such covered entity can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation of the business of such covered entity; ... (7) failing to select and administer tests concerning employment in the most effective manner to ensure that, when such test is administered to a job applicant or employee who has a disability that impairs sensory, manual, or speaking skills, such test results accurately reflect the skills, aptitude, or whatever other factor of such applicant or employee that such test purports to measure, rather than reflecting the impaired sensory, manual, or speaking skills of such employee or applicant (except where such skills are the factors that the test purports to measure). 42 U.S. Code § 12111 defines &quot;Reasonable accommodation&quot; and undue hardship” as follows: (9) Reasonable accommodation The term “reasonable accommodation” may include— (9) (A) making existing facilities used by employees readily accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities; and (9) (B) job restructuring, part-time or modified work schedules, reassignment to a vacant position, acquisition or modification of equipment or devices, appropriate adjustment or modifications of examinations, training materials or policies, the provision of qualified readers or interpreters, and other similar accommodations for individuals with disabilities. (10) Undue hardship (10) (A) In general The term “undue hardship” means an action requiring significant difficulty or expense, when considered in light of the factors set forth in subparagraph (B). (10) (B) Factors to be considered In determining whether an accommodation would impose an undue hardship on a covered entity, factors to be considered include— (10) (B) (i) the nature and cost of the accommodation needed under this chapter; (10) (B) (ii) the overall financial resources of the facility or facilities involved in the provision of the reasonable accommodation; the number of persons employed at such facility; the effect on expenses and resources, or the impact otherwise of such accommodation upon the operation of the facility; (10) (B) (iii) the overall financial resources of the covered entity; the overall size of the business of a covered entity with respect to the number of its employees; the number, type, and location of its facilities; and (10) (B) (iv) the type of operation or operations of the covered entity, including the composition, structure, and functions of the workforce of such entity; the geographic separateness, administrative, or fiscal relationship of the facility or facilities in question to the covered entity. Under 42 U.S. Code § 2000e–5 and subsequent sections informal measures are normally first attempted to remedy any violation. If those fail, remadies can include injunctions against continued discrimination, awards of back pay (not relevant when the person was never an employee) orders to employ a person, awards of costs and legal fees, and other damages. No specific remedy is automatic, there is wide discretion.