Mark Law Firm Blog

Non-compete agreements are becoming more and more common. Once limited to high-level employees in whom companies invested a great deal of time and trust, these restrictions are now frequently imposed without negotiation on lower-wage and lower-level employees. The laws regarding which non-compete agreements are enforceable vary from state to state, and pending legislation may soon dramatically alter how New Jersey determines which non-compete agreements are enforceable against its workers. 

If you work in certain industries in New Jersey, your pay may be regulated by the New Jersey Prevailing Wage Act (PWA). This law establishes a “prevailing wage level,” or set wage rate, for workers engaged in construction, maintenance, and other services for many New Jersey public works projects. If the PWA applies to your position and your employer isn’t complying with its requirements, you may have a legal claim.

New Jersey became the 14th state to allow medical marijuana when the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Cannabis Act (“CUMCA”) was signed into law on January 18, 2010. Recently, the act was amended to expand patient access to medical marijuana, to provide job protections to medical marijuana users, and to create new drug testing procedures. By doing so, New Jersey joined multiple other states—including Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island—that offer employment protections to users of medical marijuana in compliance with state regulations.

Many pregnant women worry about telling their employer the good news, fearing that they will be demoted, terminated, or reassigned to less desirable duties. Before you talk to your employer about your pregnancy, know your rights.

Do you have an employee handbook? Whether you’re an employer or an employee, you should know that in New Jersey, this document can change your rights and responsibilities.

A bill pending in the New Jersey legislature would place new restrictions on the use of non-compete agreements between workers and their employers. If enacted into law, Assembly Bill A1769 would establish numerous specific requirements that non-compete agreements must comply with in order to be enforceable within the state.

In recent years, several large companies have laid off thousands of New Jersey workers. Although the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (the “WARN Act”) provides some protection to employees of large companies during layoffs, many states, including New Jersey, have additional rules that supplement or reinforce the federal protections for workers subject to mass layoffs. A bill pending in the New Jersey Senate, however, would continue the state’s push to pioneer groundbreaking worker-friendly policies by extending additional protections to employees terminated in large workforce reductions. 

When an employee brings credible, substantiated accusations of sexual harassment or discrimination in a workplace, their employer often settles discreetly for “an undisclosed sum of money” and an agreement to keep everything confidential. A law passed earlier this year in New Jersey declares that such confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements are against the greater interest of the public and, as such, unenforceable. Not only does the new law restrict settlement agreements, it significantly restricts the rights of employers to require that employees broadly waive rights related to pursuing discrimination, retaliation, or harassment claims that may arise during their employment. 

In recent years, the number of pedestrian fatalities in the United States has grown significantly faster than all other traffic-related deaths. Knowing your responsibilities as a pedestrian can help prevent these occurrences and can help you recover if you have suffered injuries as a result of an auto-pedestrian collision. 

In a landmark decision, the New Jersey Appellate Court recently ruled that a plaintiff’s claims for wrongful termination in violation of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD) could proceed. The significant aspect of this plaintiff’s claim is that his termination was allegedly based on his use of marijuana in accordance with New Jersey’s Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act. The Appellate Court reversed the decision of the lower court dismissing his claims outright, ruling that he had pled sufficient allegations to support a claim under the NJLAD and allowing litigation on those claims to go forward.