Employment Law Case Notes

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal,California
• Author: By Anthony J. Oncidi
• Publication year: 2016
• Citation: Vol. 30 No. 5

Employment Law Case Notes

By Anthony J. Oncidi

Anthony J. Oncidi is a partner in and the Chair of the Labor and Employment Department of Proskauer Rose LLP in Los Angeles, where he exclusively represents employers and management in all areas of employment and labor law. His telephone number is (310) 284-5690 and his email address is aoncidi@proskauer.com. (Tony has authored this column without interruption for every issue of this publication since 1990.)

Employer Is Entitled to Recover $4 Million in Attorney's Fees from EEOC

CRST Van Expedited, Inc. v. EEOC, 578 U.S. ___, 136 S. Ct. 1642 (2016)

The EEOC filed suit against CRST (a trucking company), alleging that over 250 female employees and prospective employees had been subjected to sexual harassment. The district court dismissed all of the claims on various grounds, including that the EEOC had not adequately investigated or attempted to conciliate the claims on the employees' behalf before filing suit. The district court then granted CRST more than $4 million in prevailing-party attorney's fees. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed the dismissal of only two claims, which led it to vacate, without prejudice, the attorney's fees award. On remand, the EEOC settled one of the reversed claims and withdrew the other. The district court again awarded CRST more than $4 million in attorney's fees. On appeal, the Eighth Circuit reversed, holding that a Title VII defendant can be a "prevailing party" only by obtaining a ruling on the merits. In this opinion, the United States Supreme Court vacated the Eighth Circuit's judgment, holding that a favorable ruling on the merits is not a necessary predicate to finding that a defendant is a "prevailing party."

Former Employee Who Accessed Employer's Computers Was Properly Imprisoned

United States v. Nosal, Nos. 14-10037, 14-10275, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 12382, 2016 WL 3608752 (9th Cir., July 5, 2016)

In this criminal proceeding brought under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the United States government filed a criminal indictment against David Nosal (a former employee of Korn/Ferry International) as a result of his obtaining information from Korn/Ferry's computer system for the purpose of defrauding Korn/Ferry and setting up a competing executive search firm. The government succeeded in proving under the CFAA that an employee accesses a protected computer without authorization when he or she does so without permission; the government also successfully prosecuted Nosal for trade secret theft under the Economic Espionage Act (EEA). The district court sentenced Nosal to one year and one day in prison and three years of supervised release. It also imposed a $60,000 fine and ordered Nosal to pay approximately $828,000 in restitution to Korn/Ferry.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the conviction, holding that "Nosal, a former employee whose computer access credentials were revoked by Korn/Ferry acted 'without authorization' in violation of the CFAA when he or his former employee co-conspirators used the login credentials of a current employee [Nosal's former assistant] to gain access to computer data owned by the former employer and to circumvent the revocation of access." The court also affirmed Nosal's conviction under...