Category: Uncategorized
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COVID-19 Q&A
Three weeks ago, I offered my first column regarding COVID-19. I never envisioned that we would be where we are today. Over the last week, I have fielded phone calls from employers and employees worried about layoffs, unemployment, personal health and safety, and use of leave time. Workers and employers are being overwhelmed on multiple…
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Force MAjeure Clauses
At the beginning of March I was thinking about buying a new car. The car I drive now has almost 200,000 miles and the time seemed right to buy. I did not know at the time that the Coronavirus we had been hearing about for several weeks would land on our doorstep with an explosion…
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Travel Quarantine as we reopen
On Christmas morning after the presents are opened, there is sort of a lull in the day before dinner. Why am I writing about Christmas morning almost six months before the big day? Because over the last several years during that lull between presents and dinner, I usually get on the internet and decide where our…
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Shared Work will help get employees back to work
One of the oddities about the CARES Act is that it has incentivized unemployed folks to want to remain unemployed rather than return to work. I have written about this before. Under the CARES Act, there is a provision that allows eligible persons entitled to state unemployment benefits to collect an additional $600 supplemental payment through…
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Reasonable Accommodations in a post-covid world
For the first couple of weeks after we went into self-imposed lockdown my office was scrambling to understand new federal legislation and how it would affect employees and employers. After we got over that initial hurdle, my phone stopped ringing as much as it did before the lockdown, mostly I think because people were settling in…
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thoughts on policing from a police union lawyer
1997. That’s the year I began my career representing police officers and police unions. To give you some background: I was never a cop. Nobody in my family had been a cop. I’m not enmeshed in the police culture. But I defend cops for a living. I don’t have any patience for bad cops. And I’ve come…
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Supreme Court Gives catholic church a free pass on discrimination
The U.S. Supreme Court’s term ended last week. I would say that after all that we have been though as a nation during the term, the Court provided a beacon of hope for those of us who still care about the rule of law in our nation.Nobody got everything they wanted from this court, but…
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From Woj-bomb to f-bomb
I wrote my first Legal Business column in 1997. Except for a short foray into local politics in the late 90s, I have been writing this column continuously now for more than 23 years. But before I started typing out my thoughts on legal issues, I was a sportswriter at this newspaper.In the early nineties…
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Worker’s Compensation and emotional injury
Back in 2012 when the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy happened I was privileged to work with the Newtown Police Union. I still do. At the time of that horrific event, few people in this state knew or understood that the emotional impacts that first responders suffered on that…
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Pregnancy Discrimination
I’m getting older. So are you, by the way. There are a number of ways that this understanding becomes apparent for me. My back aches. I groan when I tie my shoes. I am a purveyor of bad jokes. I yell at the news on the television. I still…
The Law Office of Eric R. Brown 