Stanford GSB, Entry 17: Winter Networking, The Revolving Door, and Sundance

My experience with classes this quarter is VERY different from my experience last quarter. How so, you ask?

On the one hand, I have more classes than I had last quarter; but on the other hand, I find myself with a little more free time.

How is that possible? First, I was smart enough to select classes in such a way that I have only one class on Monday’s and Friday’s (in the morning) – this means I’m free all afternoon on both days. (Actually I wish I could really claim to be that smart – it just kind of ended up that way by accident, but now I see the wisdom of it). Secondly, the GSB doesn’t have classes on Wednesday, which means that I’m free that whole day (except for an occasional test like the Accounting midterm, which is coming up next week!). So three out of five days a week, I have mostly free days.

This comes in handy because part of the benefit of going to Stanford GSB comes from networking, and I didn't do any real networking last quarter at all. OK, OK – I’ll admit it- I’m sure I’m not the first GSB student to say this publicly – networking is not just “part of the benefit”, it’s probably the “main benefit”; the real reason why we’re shelling out so much of our own cash to go back to school is mostly because of the contacts and relationships we hope to make, academic and business.

This includes not only the relationships we develop while we’re here, but the very impressive (… drumroll please …) Stanford alumni network. As current students (and alumni), we have access to the GSB Alumni database, which includes management from pretty much every company in California. In my industry (software, VC, internet) this is what Maverick would call a “target-rich environment’ (Yes, I’m quoting from the movie Top Gun!)

Since we arrived in the fall, we’ve had several alumni of the program tell us that we should take advantage of this resource while we’re at Stanford. Lars Delgaarde (more on him later), a very successful Sloan alumnus, told us that almost all GSB alums will take a meeting with us while we’re students, but maybe not once we’ve graduated. Another alum told us to “use the student card” as much as possible, ‘cause we won’t have it for long.

Tick-tock. Amidst this background, I realized recently that the Sloan program is half-over, and I hadn’t contacted a single alumnus in the fall quarter. I'm starting to hear the academic clock ticking, ever so slightly off in the distance.

Slowly, the MBA2’s (second year MBA’s) are starting to get job offers and making plans for what they’ll do next. Though even in the MBA community there is some anxiety nowadays because of the weak job market. The management consulting and investment banking jobs that MBA’s jet off to in droves every year are suddenly much diminished in number, or not to be found at all! Tick-tock for them too.

For company-sponsored Sloans, this clock just means they’re getting closer to a promotion or some other job back in their companies. For the self-sponsored Sloans, many of whom have no source of income lined up after the program is over, it’s like a horror movie where you gradually realize that there’s something creepy out there watching you, and it’s gaining on you. Tick-tock, Tick-tock.

OK LOL, it’s not really that bad, yet. We are still having fun and I am enjoying my classes. But there is some strange sound in the background that I haven’t really been paying attention to that seems to get a little bit louder every week. Tick-tock.

The Revolving Door

What also makes this quarter different is that the classes are more interesting. That doesn’t mean that classes last quarter weren’t interesting in their own way (Economics turned out to be very interesting, and I learned more in Finance than I thought I did, and Modeling turned out to be kind of fun by the end).

But it seems like we’re talking more about real business issues than we did before. Or maybe I just think that’s the case, since I got to choose which classes I’m taking this quarter.

In my undergraduate days at MIT, I skipped classes pretty often. I’ve had that temptation here at Stanford many times, especially the early morning classes. But each time, I have to remind myself that the classes are interesting enough that I usually don’t want to skip them.

OK that’s not entirely true: I have skipped our 8:15 am Basic Accounting Class once or twice (hopefully the professor is not reading this blog!).

I've been thinking about it and maybe one of the reasons why the classes are more interesting is that we have a LOT of guest speakers.

Many of the professors themselves have led interesting lives (Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, teaches a class here at the GSB, and my VC and Entrepreneurship teacher, John Glynn, runs a VC firm as his “real job” – Glynn Capital) before teaching classes here at Stanford.

Recently, a Stanford alum told me about the “revolving door” here. A Stanford alum, upon leaving campus, usually gets a job, moves up in their organizations or starts a company, does well, makes lots of money, and then if he or she’s lucky, starts teaching a class here at Stanford (usually in the GSB), ending up right back where they started.

Speaking of revolving doors, this last week has felt like a revolving door of guests in all of my classes. I almost felt like I was at a conference, not at school. Since Last Friday, here is a sampling of the guest speakers that visited my classes:

• David Placek, CEO and founder of Lexicon Branding, who visited our “How to Make Ideas Stick” class. I had never heard of Lexicon, but we read a case about them first. To put it simply: They chose names for things. What kinds of names? Intel hired them to find a name that could be trademarked for its chips (names like 486 and 386 could not be). They eventually came up with “Pentium”. Similarly, P&G needed a name for a new dry mop – Lexicon came up with “Swiffer”. The list goes on and on of popular names that we’ve all heard of (and some we haven’t). I found it interesting that this (naming and branding) was pretty much the only thing the company does. They have an entire process for brainstorming and choosing names – which includes things like phonetics and how different sounds affect consumers. Different. And Interesting.

• David Burke, Makena Capital – who used to be one of the key players managing Stanford’s endowment. Stanford’s endowment is one of the largest in the country (at something like $8 billion, second only to Harvard’s endowment, if memory serves), which means they are one of the largest investors in the country. He spoke to us about how Stanford (and now Makena, which he started with with colleagues from Stanford) makes decisions about investing in Venture Capital funds (since this was for my Entrepreneurship and VC class).

• Naveen Chopra, VP Corporate Strategy at TiVo – In our marketing class, we had a case on TiVo and how it could position its products in the marketplace when they first came out with their innovative product. Today of course they have fierce competition from cable operators like ComCast and have to adjust their strategy. After discussing the case, our professor introduced Naveen and he talked about some of the challenges that TiVo has faced and how they’re being addressed still today.

• Rick Arney, Barclay’s Bank. In my class on currency trading, we had the managing director of investment strategy for Barclay’s Global Market Strategies Group – i.e. their currency trading group stop by. He talked to us about the currency markets. One interesting fact that I remembered: The currency markets are completely unregulated. There is no SEC. Another: the currency markets today are in a state of turmoil that is off the charts.

• Speaking of the SEC, in our accounting class we had our first visitor this week: Julie Erhardt, Deputy Chief Accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Not only is she a Stanford alum, but Julie was in the Sloan program,which made for an interesting discussion. Much of her role consists of working with other countries SEC-equivalent agencies.

• Lars Delgaarde, CEO, SuccessFactors. Lars is a CEO of SuccessFactors, a software company he founded after graduating from the Sloan program a few years back. When he started the company and bought some existing technology, it had been difficult for him to get VC’s to invest in his idea; after a few years he built SuccessFacstors up to over $100 million in sales and one of the most successful software IPO’s over the past few years. Lars spoke about culture and what kind of culture he built at SuccessFactors.

• Matt Harris, co-founder of Village Ventures. We learned of a group trying to innovate the long-unchanged world of Venture Capital. They started with a very small fund in Williamstown, MA, and came up with the idea of supporting VC funds in non-traditional places -i.e. not Silicon Valley and not Boston. Since then, they've established relationships with 16 funds in different cities across the country and the UK, espousing their unique strategy. I found this interesting because I've been thinking about the VC industry myself and wondering if there aren't other models than the popular Silicon Valley model. This is an interesting one.

All of these speakers came in a single week, and in just the classes that I’m taking. Granted, this was a particularly busy week (we don't have this meany speakers in our classes every week), but even half of these speakers would still make for some interesting classes.

And this doesn’t include the numerous optional speakers and presentations that were going on during this same week at the GSB, which always has a lively calendar of events! Now you have a glimpse of what it's like taking classes here at the GSB.

Sundance and other events

I was going to write about the GSB trip to the Sundance film festival two weekends ago, and the Chinese New Year’s party we had last weekend, both of which I attended. I should also mention the Australia day events (the GSB is an international place), the Sloan Ski Trip to Tahoe this weekend, both of which I didn’t attend.

But it’s getting late, and guess what, I haven’t done any networking in the past few days…so it’ll have to wait until the next entry.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Starbucks CEO Salary Cut: Spot the Issue

I saw a news item in the WSJ about the Starbucks CEO's announcement that he's cutting his own salary from $1.2 million to $10,000 per year. Great PR, right? But, let's play "spot the wage and hour issue."

Unless I'm missing something, and I've been accused of missing many things,* Mr. Schultz transformed himself into a non-exempt CEO of a publicly traded corporation! (Yes, the salary is too low to qualify him as exempt under federal law).

I got a laugh out of this, because I'm an idiot. But wouldn't they vet this issue with their employment lawyers?

This is probably not a big deal, since Mr. Schultz is likely not going to sue his own company to recover the overtime wages he will be due once he fails the exempt test. Howard...call me.

*If there is some other aspect of his compensation that qualifies him for the salary test that was not reported in the article, please accept my apologies o SBUX legal team.

Lily Ledbetter "Fair Pay" Act

Ledbetter v. Goodyear was one of those Supreme Court decisions that galvanized politicians, activists, etc. and became a proxy for complaints about "conservative" judges. We posted about that case here. We wrote an article about it here.

The opinion simply held that Title VII discrimination claims apply what's called a "statute of limitations." The "statute of limitations" protects employers from old claims. Claims that cannot be defended because records are gone, witnesses are dead or moved away, etc. It also protects defendants when plaintiffs "sit on their rights" and wait too long to prosecute their claims. By the way, Title VII indeed contains a statute of limitations. The dispute was over how it was applied.

Ledbetter had an Area Manager job with Goodyear for almost 20 years. Over a period of 15 years, her pay slipped as compared with other males. She finally sued for sex discrimination in her compensation under Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. The court held that the claims were time barred, because the allegedly discriminatory decisions to set her compensation were made outside the limitations period. But Ledbetter argued that every time she was paid, it was a new discriminatory act. As if the payroll coordinator knew how her wages were set. Anyway, the Court decided that her claims were time barred because none of the discriminatory decisions occurred within the 300 day limitations period that applies.

The decision hardly broke new ground. But it created a political firestorm, maybe because there was a presidential election campaign going on? Nah. But - but - Ms. Ledbetter spoke at one of the national party political conventions this year. Shhh.

Anyway, new administration, new laws. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act will make all compensation-based discrimination claims timely as long as one paycheck issued under the discriminatory practice falls within the limitations period. Ripple effects? Settlements, documentation and review of compensation decisions, pay equity studies.... the mind boggles.

Here's the text of the Act, which signed on 1/29/09. Oh its effective date? May 26, 2007 - the day the Supreme Court issued its decision. So, it is retro, at least as to pending cases.

Anyway, this will help you take your mind off Ms. Ledbetter and her new law: EFCA can't be far behind!

Greg

Court of Appeal Applies Anti-SLAPP Law to EDD Report

Dible worked for the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic as a counselor. The clinic terminated her employment for performance reasons. The clinic contested her unemployment claim. Ms. Dible sued for defamation and other claims. However, after some litigation, the clinic moved the court under the anti-SLAPP statute to dismiss the claim. Why? Because the clinic exercised its First Amendment rights to make a report in an official proceeding. The Court of Appeal agreed that the anti-SLAPP statute barred her claim. Dible then argued that she should be able to assert a claim for "defamation by compelled self-publication," because the clinic should have known Dible would have to re-publish to third parties the clinic's assertions regarding her performance.

The Court of Appeal disagreed:

Here we are clearly being asked to create a wider exception for claimants who have not republished where it is foreseeable that they might do so in the future. We decline to do so. Such a rule would require courts to engage in considerable speculation as to future conduct and lead to untenable attempts to speculate on future damage. A court could not, for instance, account for the possibility that after a plaintiff has received an award for damages in the form of lost future wages, he or she might republish while seeking a job and be given the job, thus not be damaged, nonetheless.

Since publication or republication to a third person is necessary to establish the cause of action of defamation, we conclude that plaintiff cannot establish a probability of success upon her defamation claim. The motion pursuant to section 425.16 was therefore properly granted.

The case is Dible v. Haight Ashbury Free Clinic and the opinion is here.

U.S. Supreme Court: Retaliation Provisions Cover Investigation Witness

Vicky Crawford worked for the Metropolitan school district of Nashville and Davidson County, TN. The agency was conducing an investigation into a harassment complaint made against an employee, who happened to be the employee relations director.

The investigator from the human resources department asked Crawford whether she had experienced inappropriate behavior by the director. She disclosed she had witnessed certain conduct. The district later fired Crawford, allegedly for embezzlement. She sued for retaliation.

The issue before the Supreme Court was whether Crawford's participation in the investigation fell within Title VII's anti-retaliation protections. The court unanimously ruled that "opposition" includes providing information during an investigation. The lower courts and the employer argued that it would require something more affirmative - such as making a complaint.

The case is CRAWFORD v. METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT OF NASHVILLE AND DAVIDSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE and the opinion is here.

Our Little Blog Scores a "TOP" Legal Blogs Mention

We're no. 1! Ok, I'm joking. We're NOT no. 1. No, we're not no. 101 either. But we did score in the top 300 law blogs as measured by rating service Avvo.

And that makes us proud. The kind of pride you feel when someone who has the same first name as you is arrested for pet endangerment. Yes, the crawl-under-your-desk sort of feeling that your humble correspondent has experienced since, oh, fifth grade or so. I know, it's time to up the meds.

Anyway, if you want to find some popular blogs to monitor, here's the list with links to all the heavy hitters. See, you thought this post was going to be a self-indulgent waste of time, didn't you?

Greg

EFCA Debate and Article

So, I wrote this column on the Employee Free Choice (sic) Act or EFCA if you haven't seen it already. Someone must have read it, because I was invited to debate EFCA on the radio on Friday, January 23, 2009 at 7:00 a.m. Roy Ulrich, a lawyer and the host of "Morning Review" on KPFK-FM in LA, hosted the forum.

I was up against a professor from my alma mater. I think she would rescind my diploma if it were up to her.

The interesting aspect of the debate is the opinion my opponent offered about the motivation behind this law. It's not about expanding union representation at the workplace for the sake of workers, etc. It's about the labor "movement." The more members the unions get, the more money they earn. The more money they earn, the more they can lobby politicians and affect election outcomes. Their hope is to elect politicians who will change world TRADE POLICY and become anti-"globalization." Now, *I'm* not saying that's what EFCA is really about. Rather, "that's what she said."

Anyway, if you want to hear my radio stylings, you may do so here. The King of all Media has nothing to worry about. (And "baba booey" to you all.)

DGV

U.S. Supreme Court Clarifies Standards for Unions to Charge Nonmembers Service Fees

An employee member of a collective bargaining unit may choose not to be a member of the union that represents the unit. However, under First Amendment jurisprudence, the union may charge the non-member a "service fee" for bargaining services. But the union must carve out the portion of dues spent on activities unrelated to collective bargaining (such as political activity). In Locke v. Karass, the Court addressed whether the union could include the costs associated with litigation directed by the national union. The Court in a unanimous opinion held that such expenses may be charged as part of the service fee when:

(1) the subject matter of the (extra-local) litigation is of a kind that would be
chargeable if the litigation were local, e.g., litigation appropriately related to collective bargaining rather than political activities, and (2) the charge is reciprocal in nature, i.e., the contributing local reasonably expects other locals to contribute similarly to the national’s resources used for costs of similar litigation on behalf of the contributing local if and when it takes place.

Wake up. This is important stuff. The case is Locke v. Karass and the opinion is here.

Court of Appeal: Waiting Time Penalties Are...Penalties

The Court of Appeal in Pineda v. Bank of America held that "waiting time" penalties imposed under Lab. Code Section 203 are not a form of "wages" or property of the plaintiff. They are indeed penalties, unlike meal period penal- er - premiums. So, the court found, the plaintiffs could not seek waiting time penalties under the unfair competition law, Bus. Prof. Code section 17200. This is important because section 17200 carries with it a four-year statute of limitations.
A year or so ago, a superior court in another case made the extraordinary determination that waiting time penalties are wages, not penalties, and were recoverable under the UCL. So much for that argument.
The opinion in Pineda is here.

Bye Bye Brinkley

The California Supreme Court granted review in Brinkley v. Public Storage, here. We posted about Brinkley, a very employer-friendly meal and rest period decision, here. Yes, yes, I know. We predicted the Supreme Court would grant review in our earlier post. No wonder we rank among the top 700,000 blogs.

Greg

5th Circuit Awards Attorney's Fees Against EEOC

The federal and California courts apply the same standards in awarding attorney's fees in discrimination cases. So, the recent case of EEOC v. Agro Distribution LLC (opinion: here) is relevant to awards of fees in California. And I can write about other circuits' cases if I want to. So there.

The reason I'm writing about this one is that the EEOC pursued a case well beyond the point that it should have determined it lacked merit. The investigator initially assigned to the charge was on a mission. The plaintiff's deposition doomed the plaintiff's claim. The settlement demands were unreasonably high.

The court of appeals first decided that EEOC failed to "conciliate" or attempt to resolve the case in good faith. The agency made a very high demand and then immediately closed conciliation efforts when the demand was rejected, despite the employer's attempt to engage in settlement negotiations. However, the court also found that failure to conciliate is not a jurisdictional defect.

The court then held that the district court's award of fees against the EEOC was within the court's discretion. The district court awarded about $225,000 in fees for the period of time following the plaintiff's deposition until summary judgment. (That's a heck of a bill for post-deposition litigation through summary judgment, but the district court did not find fault in the billings). The court of appeals agreed with the district court that after the plaintiff's deposition, the agency's further prosecution of the case was absolutely unjustifiable.

This case may be used in situations when a case of arguable merit at inception is revealed through discovery to be frivolous, unreasonable, or without foundation. Fees should be awarded in favor of the employer from that point, if not from the beginning of the case.

DGV

Stanford Busines, Entry 16: Winter Quarter, Report Cards, and Musharraf

The Winter Break
After scattering to different parts of the world for Christmas break, we finally started our second quarter in early January. While I travelled to Boston and Pakistan, some of my colleagues travelled to India, Japan, Europe, Kazakhstan, and to various countries in South America.

A few stayed on campus and explored the San Francisco area; some went skiing at Lake Tahoe, which is a very popular thing to do in the Bay Area. There is a Sloan ski trip scheduled there in a few weeks .

Many of the MBA’s went on organized trips to different parts of the world. It is part of their requirements that they take an international study trip at least once a year; some of them fulfilled that requirement over the Winter Break, going to places like India, Vietnam, Malaysia, and several countries in Africa. Some of the MBA’s are going to do their trips over Spring Break. The Sloan program has it’s own study trip during Spring Break – our East Coast Study Trip.

Report Cards.
Over the winter break, we got the grades for our classes from the Fall Quarter.
Grading at the GSB doesn’t consist of a normal A-F grades, nor even numerical grades.

It consists of the following: H (rarely given, stands for Honors, I think; for students who do extremely well; I think it’s up to the instructors discretion whether anyone gets this grade; HP (High Pass; for those who do well in a class; typically I think this ends up being something like 20% of the class), P (Pass; for those who pass the class, this is 50% of the class), LP (Low Pass; this is for the bottom 20% of the class), and a failing grade (I don’t remember the letter, but it’s not F). From what little I know, the H is rare, but the failing grade is even more rare. I.E. if you completely *#!!-up, then you might fail a class.

In the Sloan Program, many of us haven’t been “graded” by a teacher in over 10 years, so this was a novel experience. Still, it didn’t stop us from approaching our professors when we thought we’d gotten a grade less than what we deserved. I heard that we became known as the class that quibbles with professors over grades.
How did I do? Well, I like to think of myself a poet-quant hybrid, able to do well in quantitative and qualitative subjects, but I was up for a rude awakening. In my quantitative classes (Finance, Financial Modeling, Economics: all of which were our “core” 4 unit classes), I did very well! I guess my engineering background paid off after all.

In the “softer” classes which were less quantitative, I did not so great. These were generally our 2-unit classes, which lasted less than the whole quarter such as: Organizational Behavior, Strategic Leadership, Negotiations, etc.
The biggest surprise to me were the embarrassingly low grades I received for my papers in these soft subjects. This was even more surprising (and embarrassing) since I haven’t done a single math problem since college, but have basically been a writer and a leader in the years since – having written several books, lots of articles, and led multiple organizations!

As Scooby-Doo would say, Yikes!

In the fall, we had sessions to help the poets learn the quantitative subjects, called: “Finance for Poets, Modeling for Poets”. These were mostly about how to think about doing the problems that the professor was likely to ask in exams and problem sets. Maybe we need a “Writing papers for Quants: How to think like a Stanford professor’s grading assistant”. I’ll be there!

The New Quarter.
We started the Winter Quarter at the beginning of January. The academic school year at Stanford consists of three quarters (plus the summer quarter, which is optional for most grad students). From what I can tell, the Winter quarter is actually the shortest quarter, going for only 10 weeks.

Coming back to campus felt a bit like a homecoming. It didn’t take long to get settled in again after our brief several hour orientation on the Monday after New Year’s Day.

This quarter is very different for the Sloans. This is because we’re not spending all of our time in a single classroom with our fellow program members. We only have two core classes (Accounting, with a beginner and advanced version, and Marketing. As a result, we are only fully together as a class in Marketing.
The rest of our classes are electives, and these are the classes that make Stanford what it is. We take our classes with other Sloans and with MBA2’s (second year MBA students). None of the first year MBA’s are allowed to take electives yet so we haven’t had any classes with them.

Electives that I’m taking this quarter include Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital, How to Make Ideas Stick (about marketing messages which are sticky), and International Financial Management (about currency trading). I know some classmates who are taking all entrepreneurship-related classes (there are a lot at Stanford), and some who are taking all Finance-related classes, but most have a mix of the two.

The Sloan program is structured so that most of us take 5 classes this quarter and then 4 classes in the final quarter, or vice-versa. Many of us decided to take 6 classes this quarter, but quickly discovered that the amount of reading and work associated with 6 classes probably wasn’t worth it – most of us who did that ended up dropping one of our classes.

Classes with MBAs
The main difference in taking classes with MBA2s? The professors expect us to be more prepared and to have always read the cases. There’s a lot more cold-calling in MBA classes than Sloan classes. By cold-calling, I mean when the professor just calls on someone randomly and asks them about the reading. The way to avoid being cold-called is to hold up your hand, volunteering to discuss the case. Of course, that supposes you’ve read the material!

I think the most useful skill for me at business school has been the ability to read very fast – rather skim and get the key points of a case. Many of the cases are 12 pages long – of course you don’t need to know every detail of the case, just the broad strokes, and this usually suffices as long as you have the case with you during classes.

Much of the non-financial classes are case-based. Stanford offers a mix of case-based classes (which was pioneered and is in vogue at Harvard) and lecture-based classes (which tends to be done at many other business schools). Many of our classes combine case and lecture, which is pretty effective method overall.
In any case, it’s nice to finally get to take classes with the folks that we’ve been wandering around the corridors of the GSB with.

Musharraf Visits
Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf visited campus this week and gave a talk. I wasn’t able to stay for the whole thing, but they did say it was unusual for a former foreign public official to speak on campus so soon after leaving his post.

He spoke primarily about terrorism and extremism, based on his understanding of Pakistan and the region. He compared it to a Tree, with terrorists being the leaves on the tree, and terrorist organizations being the branches. Simply getting rid of the leaves, or trimming the branches, won’t get rid of terrorism. The roots, the root causes, which include poverty, illiteracy, political alienation, and extremism, all need to be addressed. He gave a history of Afghanistan, particularly over the past 20 years and spoke about how the traditional structures that held it together as a nation disintegrated during the 10 year jihad that Pakistan and the US started and fueled there against the soviets during that time.

He went on to answer questions from a professor and subsequently from the audience. I didn’t stay for this part, but do like the fact that we’re getting people like him coming to campus regularly.

Court of Appeal Affirms Jury Verdict Finding Adequate Accommodation

Julie Wilson worked as a radio dispatcher for Orange County's emergency communications system. Because of a disability that was aggravated by stress, she sought accommodations that included assignment only to certain shifts at certain times. The county temporarily gave her exactly what she wanted, but decided initially that the accommodation could not be permanent. After substantial negotiating, leaves, and rejected proposals, the County assented to all of Wilson's requests. The key issue was the delay between her initial request and the final accommodation. A jury returned a verdict for the county on her claim for denial of accommodation. The court of appeal affirmed:

The real gist of Wilson’s complaint is not that she wasn’t accommodated, but that it took too long for her supervisors to finally agree to a permanent arrangement--i.e., that she could return to work at Control One, in her same position, with the restrictions she wanted. It is this delay that forms the basis of her interactive process
claim. She argues that as a matter of law, the County failed to engage in a good faith
interactive process with her because it did not commence the interactive process until June 2005, prior to which the County simply “contrived a circumstance” to justify not engaging in the interactive process—namely, that Wilson’s disability was
only temporary.

* * *

Here, the record demonstrates the County engaged in a process aimed at trying to accommodate Wilson. Indeed, the success of its process is borne out by the fact
that in the end, Wilson got exactly what she wanted—albeit after a series of temporary accommodations.

The case is Wilson v. Orange County and the opinion is here.

SV Employment Law Article Pot Pourri

We publish articles bi-weekly in the Sacramento Daily Recorder newspaper, and about monthly in the San Francisco Daily Journal. Here are some of the articles we've published in the past few months:

STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS FOR FEHA CLAIMS ON THE VERGE OF EXTINCTION
By Jennifer Brown Shaw and Shane K. Anderies
The Daily Recorder
2008-12-30

WILL CONGRESS BAN SEXUAL ORIENTATION DISCRIMINATION?
By Jennifer Brown Shaw and Carolyn Burnette
The Daily Recorder
2008-12-18

DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION AND QUALIFICATION STANDARDS
By Jennifer Brown Shaw and Matthew J. Norfleet
The Daily Recorder
2008-12-02

GOLDEN STATE OF MIND
By D. Gregory Valenza
The Daily Journal
2008-11-28

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS REGARDING INTERNAL EEO COMPLAINT PROCEDURES
By Jennifer Brown Shaw and Becki D. Graham
The Daily Recorder
2008-11-20

NEW LAW AIMS TO ENCOURAGE COMPLIANCE WITH DISABLED ACCESS RULES
By Jennifer Brown Shaw and Carolyn G. Burnette
The Daily Recorder
2008-11-06

ALTERNATIVE POSITIONS AS A REASONABLE ACCOMMODATION: WHAT IS REQUIRED?
By Jennifer Brown Shaw and Shane K. Anderies
The Daily Recorder
2008-10-08

THE ADA AMENDMENTS ACT
By Jennifer Brown Shaw and D. Gregory Valenza
The Daily Recorder
2008-09-24

FLESHING OUT THE ADA
By D. Gregory Valenza
The Daily Journal
2008-09-16

BACKGROUND INVESTIGATIONS KEEP GETTING MORE COMPLICATED
By Jennifer Brown Shaw and Matthew J. Norfleet
The Daily Recorder
2008-09-10

EDWARDS V. ARTHUR ANDERSEN: NON-COMPETE AGREEMENTS AND GENERAL RELEASES
By Jennifer Brown Shaw and Becki D. Graham
The Daily Recorder
2008-08-26

CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT EMPLOYMENT LAW DECISIONS 2007-2008
By Jennifer Brown Shaw and Shane K. Anderies
The Daily Recorder
2008-07-31