Articles/News
Employment Agreements: New Restrictions on Non-Disparagement, Release of FEHA Claims, and Sex Harassment Confidentiality Provisions
It prohibits employers, in exchange for a raise, bonus, or as a condition of employment, from requiring employees to sign a release of claims under FEHA, or a non-disparagement agreement that inhibits the ability of an employee to disclose illegal acts in the workplace, including but not limited to sexual harassment. To be added section […]
Read »Associate Samantha Tran Joins Donahue Fitzgerald
Sam joins Donahue Fitzgerald’s Intellectual Property and Franchise practices. Prior to joining Donahue Fitzgerald, she worked at California Lawyers for the Arts as a Senior Law Fellow. She worked with creative artists, independent inventors, national law firms and corporate in-house legal teams on a myriad of pro bono art related matters. Since 2012, she has provided […]
Read »Senior Counsel Kate Friend Joins Donahue Fitzgerald
Kate joins Donahue Fitzgerald’s Employment and Litigation practices. As an experienced litigator, she assists clients in all phases of the litigation cycle from pre-litigation advice, up to and including serving as a second chair at trial. Prior to Donahue Fitzgerald, she practiced extensively in high-stakes, complex litigation, much of it in the toxic tort arena. […]
Read »Senior Counsel Yen P. Chau Joins Donahue Fitzgerald
Yen joins Donahue Fitzgerald’s Employment practice. A seasoned employment law litigator, Yen handles claims involving FEHA/ Title VII violations of discrimination, harassment, retaliation, failure to accommodate, and wrongful termination. She also represents her clients in cases involving trade secret misappropriation and wage and hour violations. She litigates in state and federal courts, as well as […]
Read »The Bounds of the Work for Hire Doctrine
Both the House and Senate Reports have the same four paragraph summary of the intent of Congress in enacting the “new” work for hire provisions in the 1976 Act.[1] In pertinent part, those reports state that the work for hire provision: adopts one of the basic principles of the present law: that in the case […]
Read »The Continuing Impact of PhoneDog v. Kravitz on the Ownership of Business-Related Social Media Accounts
It’s been almost seven years since PhoneDog v. Kravitz, a pioneering case that helped establish that business social media accounts could constitute trade secrets. In PhoneDog, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss the trade secret misappropriation claim. During these past seven years, the use of social media has only […]
Read »Donahue Fitzgerald Attorneys Recognized in the Best Lawyers in America 2019 Edition
OAKLAND (August 15, 2018) – Three attorneys from Donahue Fitzgerald were recognized in The Best Lawyers in America© 2019: Dawn Newton, Franchise Law Merrill J. Schwartz, Corporate Law Kristin A. Pace, Tax Law The Best Lawyers in America rankings are based solely on peer-review surveys in which tens of thousands of attorneys confidentially evaluate their colleagues. As lawyers do not […]
Read »Twitter Account Is Trade Secret, Publisher Says, Testing Law
Read the full article, Twitter Account Is Trade Secret, Publisher Says, Testing Law
Read »Senior Counsel Holiday D. Powell Joins the Firm’s Oakland Office
Holiday joins the firm from Clark Hill PLC, where she focused on complex business and product liability litigation. She defends Fortune 500 companies, privately held companies, and individual client from a variety of sectors, such as technology, life sciences, and insurance, in class actions, MDLs, and individual cases across the country in state and federal […]
Read »Nonprofits Need to Know About the New “ABC Test” for Classifying Independent Contractors
The case – Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court – is aimed at making it harder for companies like Uber and Lyft to use independent contractors, but the breadth of the Court’s ruling extends beyond the Gig Economy, impacting every industry, including the nonprofit sector. In the Dynamex Operations West case, the California Supreme […]
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