Paralegals Working Overtime.

You know how your paralegal responds to your stupid emails on the weekend, brings your annoying depo materials home to work on at night, and answers your preposterous phone calls on a Sunday morning when you can't find a document -- can you believe they apparently expect to be paid for this???

Not surprisingly, I like the comfortable and confident way Judge Marra deals with the Iqbal argument (a bill also languishing in Congress) that the pleading does not sufficiently detail how or when the defendant law firm The Hurst Law Group allegedly violated the FLSA:

The allegations sufficiently state how Defendants violated the FLSA; namely, by not paying Plaintiff for overtime hours worked and by not maintaining accurate records of hours worked by Plaintiff. To the extent that Defendants seek the exact date they violated the FLSA, discovery will provide Defendants with more specific dates of overtime allegedly not paid and the lack of this information is not grounds for dismissal of the Amended Complaint. See Acho v. Cort, No. C 09-00157 MHO, 2009 WL 3562472, at * 3 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 27, 2009) (“[i]t cannot be the case that a plaintiff must plead specific instances of unpaid overtime before being allowed to proceed to discovery to access the employer's records”).

 Employment lawyers, is this the crest of a wave of new suits against local law firms?

11th Circuit Tip To Aspiring Litigants -- Don't Get Assaulted At A Strip Club

There are few certainties in life, but one universal rule seems constant -- if you refuse to leave a strip club at closing time, you will in fact get the s$#t beat out of you.

The 11th Circuit upholds the validity of this maxim in an unpublished opinion affirming Judge Marra's summary judgment in a case involving the company Seductions LLC, which appears to be doing business as Hotties Gentlemen Club/Goldfellas:

Mauricio Arana was injured in 2006 when Seductions employees allegedly beat and threw him out of the company’s nightclub after he refused to leave at closing time. The Aranas subsequently sued Seductions in state court to recover damages for Mauricio’s injuries, medical expenses alleged to exceed $1 million, and loss of consortium. The Aranas’ complaint alleged that Seductions had negligently hired, retained, trained, and supervised the employees responsible for the attack.

The coverage issue centered on whether the claim sounded in negligence or arose out of an assault and battery, which was limited to $25,000 under the terms of the policy.

Guess which way the 11th came down?