The Lawletter Vol 43 No 6

Nadine Roddy—Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group
John Buckley—President, National Legal Research Group

            A federal district court sitting in Pennsylvania has held that an employer may proceed with its unfair competition suit asserting contract and tort claims against a former employee and the employee’s current employer. The employer adequately stated claims of common-law breach of fiduciary duty and unfair competition against the employee, and of aiding and abetting the same against the competitor. However, the employer’s claim of tortious interference with prospective contractual relationship against the employee would be dismissed because the complaint failed to allege a sufficient likelihood of a prospective contract. Neopart Transit, LLC v. CBM N.A., Inc., 314 F. Supp. 3d 628 (E.D. Pa. 2018).

            The plaintiff in the case, an American corporate distributor of parts for transit buses (“employer”), brought suit against a former employee and the employee’s current employer, a Canadian corporation (“competitor”), alleging that the employee stole confidential and proprietary information before resigning to go to work for the competitor, which then used the stolen information to compete with and harm the employer’s business in the United States.

The Lawletter Vol. 41, No. 2

John Buckley, Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group

     Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act ("PDA") in 1978, which added the following language to Title VII's definitions subsection:

     The terms "because of sex" or "on the basis of sex" include, but are not limited to, because of or on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions; and women affected by pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes[.]

42 U.S.C. § 2000e(k). It is generally agreed that the first clause specifies that Title VII's prohibition against sex discrimination also applies to discrimination based on "pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions." The meaning of the second clause, "or related medical conditions," has been the subject of debate and was directly addressed by the Supreme Court in this most recent case.

     In Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 1338 (2015), the petitioner, Peggy Young, was a part-time driver for the respondent, United Parcel Service ("UPS"). Young became pregnant in 2006 and was placed on a 20-pound lifting restriction by her doctor. (UPS policy required drivers to be able to lift parcels weighing up to 70 pounds.) UPS failed to provide suitable accommodations, and as a result, Young was forced to take an unpaid leave of absence during most of the time she was pregnant, resulting in the loss of her employee medical coverage.