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Expanded Consultation Practice Areas
The Minnick Law Firm in Tallahassee, Florida still actively represents several selected plaintiffs and several selected small business owners (our most established clients) who are still involved in active litigation in and around Tallahassee, and in cities west of Tallahassee in the panhandle area of north Florida. However, effective September 1, 2007, The Minnick Law Firm is limiting its direct involvement and will not be lead counsel in any new litigation cases in Florida. Consequently, the experienced attorneys at The Minnick Law firm are now able to expand their efforts to assist more clients by offering expert consultation services to selected new clients living and working in the central and north Florida cities and surrounding areas of St. Petersburg, Tampa, Lakeland, Orlando, Daytona Beach, Ocala, Gainesville, St. Augustine, Jacksonville, Lake City, Monticello, Tallahassee, Crawfordville, Wakulla, Quincy, Bristol, Blountstown, Marianna, Apalachicola, St. George Island, Port St. Joe, Panama City, Destin, Ft. Walton Beach and Pensacola. Our founder's knowledge of labor and employment law and experience in all forms of civil litigation in these and other areas of law enables the Minnick Law Firm to expand its assistance to many more clients by focusing its efforts on providing legal consultation and representation to public agency employees and to private business sector employees in need of such expert consultation services while also enabling the Firm to expand its consultation services to offer similar consultation services to many new small business employers in need of very inexpensive defense consultation representation, expert advice and general counsel services in many practice areas. Please click on the Firm's primary practice areas below to learn more about what we can do for our individual employee clients and for our new small business clients:
Employment and labor law is a very diverse field of practice covering a complex network of interrelated, sometimes overlapping and even some conflicting federal and state laws which collectively attempt to control how all public and private employers must treat all their employees, former employees, and all applicants for employment. This important area of practice is also extremely dynamic, changing repeatedly over time as legislative activity and judicial decisions force constant changes in this arena. Inexperienced attorneys entering this labyrinth of federal and state employment laws are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the published federal court decisions in federal cases litigated in this arena since the enactment of Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. Employment discrimination laws seek to prevent discrimination based on race, sex, religion, national origin, physical disability, and age by employers. There is also a growing body of law preventing or occasionally justifying employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Discriminatory practices include bias in recruiting, hiring, promotion, job assignment, termination, compensation, and other terms and conditions of employment. The laws also forbid "hostile working environments" caused by various types of workplace harassment if based upon an employee's gender, race, age, disability, national origin, or sexual orientation. The Constitution of the United States and some much earlier (1860s and 1870s) enacted federal civil rights statutes, as well as some state constitutions provide additional protection to some but not all classes of public employees in situations where the employer is a local, state or federal governmental entity, or where the local, state or federal government's laws or the governmental employer involved has failed to mandate or take appropriate remedial action or has taken significant steps to ignore intentional discrimination and thus fostering the discriminatory practice. Sexual harassment is actually a special type of gender discrimination or discrimination based on a person's sex. Sexual harassment can be defined broadly as any kind of intentional sexual behavior on the part of any supervisor or employee that is unwelcome to some other employee(s) in the workplace. Sexual harassment can include unwelcome verbal behavior whether negative or not (e.g., unwelcome requests for sex; unwelcome "come-ons" and sexual propositions; derogatory sexual comments; andin some cases even telling lewd, crude or "dirty" jokes if told under certain circumstances). Sexual harassment may also occur by visual methods (e.g., pictures of naked men or women; sexually suggestive pictures; sexually oriented posters, signs, cartoons, drawings, etc.) Sexual harassment may also come in the guise of some sort of unwelcome physical behavior or unwelcome acts in or outside of the workplace, such as kissing, grabbing, touching, brushing against, or even staring or "leering." Actionable unlawful sexual harassment can be committed by an owner, a supervisor, any managers, lead persons, forepersons, co-workers, subservient employees, and in certain egregious circumstances, even by some customers. A work environment may be found to be "hostile" when managers or co-workers are engaging in any discriminatory behavior (i.e., behavior based solely on race, sex, religion, national origin, physical disability and age intimidation) or intentional ridicule and insult which is sufficiently severe or pervasive enough to alter the complaining worker's conditions of employment and which create a real "abusive working relationship." The harassment must be abusive objectively, as oppose to subjectively; and the injured worker who files the complaint also must experience it as abusive. "Hurt feelings" are not necessarily the same as experiencing objective "abuse in the workplace." Factors that competent federal and state courts may use to determine whether or not the workplace environment is sufficiently hostile to justify bringing a hostile environment lawsuit will include some or all of the following facts:
Some local, state or federal government employees who are working in a hostile work environment that is based upon their race or gender may be entitled to bring a civil rights complaint under certain federal civil rights statutes. Fundamental Right and Civil Rights Most forms of employment discrimination laws have statutory roots embedded in this nation's constitutional protections afforded to all natural persons under the general heading of "fundamental rights" or "civil rights." However, the much broader terms "fundamental rights" and "civil rights" extend far beyond the arena of employment discrimination. Our precious "fundamental rights" include such basic human rights as the inalienable right to seek freedom, justice, and liberty; and thereby to enjoy the pursuit of happiness unfettered by any government power on this planet. Our "civil rights" include all of our Constitutional rights of freedom of speech, freedom from unlawful searches and seizures, freedom to vote, freedom to travel state-to-state, freedom to worship God (or freedom to not worship anything), equal protection of the laws and the right to procedural due process of law in all our endeavors. Our federal and state laws against all forms of "discrimination" can be seen as extensions of the Constitutional right to equal protection of the laws, which was made applicable to the Federal Government through the Fifth Amendment. This Constitutional right to equal protection of the laws, and certain other Constitutional rights were later extended to apply to all the several states by their affirmative adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, immediately following the Civil War. Both the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments contain the same clauses, viz: "equal protection of the laws" and "due process of law." It is from these two most important concepts underlying all or our "individual freedoms" that most statutory laws prohibiting "discrimination" are either grounded or may be traced. Our Firm's Unique Experience and capabilities The Minnick Law Firm has enjoyed a premier practice in these broad areas of federal and state civil rights. (Civil rights claims involve and implicate fundamental issues of human rights and individual freedoms as discussed in more detail above.) Our law firm's founder, attorney Bruce Alexander Minnick, has enjoyed a long and exciting history of litigating important civil rights claims. Beginning in March 1981 and continuing through December 1986, Bruce was a supervising Assistant Attorney General for the State of Florida. All his litigation cases during that time were focused on defending the State of Florida and its many agencies and officials being sued over due process and equal protection claims arising in a state government employment context. The intensity of his case load and the large variety of civil rights claims he litigated now enables Bruce to rely upon this vast experience in a unique consulting capacity, and to assist his selected clients and their competent trial attorneys in handling all manner of cases having any kind of civil rights element (i.e, most employment discrimination cases arising in local, state or federal settings. In addition to litigating hundreds of individual employment discrimination claims, The Minnick Law Firm has represented individual clients who believed that they were victims of racial profiling, police misconduct, suffered false arrests, endured unlawful searches and seizures, been denied access to public accommodations, been denied equal access to education, or denied equal access to housing, or being denied equal protection of the Constitutional right to vote (and other civil rights) guaranteed to all citizens (and to many U.S. residents) by the terms of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments and guaranteed by the several Voting Rights Acts and amendments thereto such as the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Securities Industry Employment Claims Employment-related claims arising in the United States securities industry present very special problems. Disputes arising between individual stockbrokers and their brokerage house employers, regardless of the nature of the disputes, usually must be handled outside of the normal EEOC or FCHR litigation channels. These claims are submitted to the Financial Industry Regulatory Agency (FINRA, formerly called the NASD) for resolution either in binding or non-binding arbitration proceedings. FINRA arbitrations are more often than not conducted by non-attorneys who have worked in the securities industry either as a stockbroker or perhaps as an owner or official of some private brokerage firm that hires and supervise the individual stockbrokers. Among the most frequent employment-related disputes that arise in this setting are:
Florida 's Lemon Law and Consumer Protection Claims Florida's complex Lemon Law statutory scheme is a powerful state law scheme which defines exactly when a manufacturer has breached its written warranty, and defines exactly what the purchaser is entitled to as relief for the proven breach of warranty. Additionally, there are various other warranty laws and consumer protection laws in Florida which can be used to recover money for Florida consumers who do not meet the strict definitions contained in the Florida Lemon Law statutes. Florida's Lemon Laws as well as other federal warranty laws and consumer protection laws collectively provide a very powerful and effective way for consumers to get rid of any defective motor vehicle (including very expensive motor homes and most recreational vehicles) or to receive a cash settlement directly from the manufacturer. Consumers may not only get rid of their "lemons." They may also be able to get the loans paid off and in some cases may even get all of their money back. Consumers may also be entitled to receive cash reimbursement for out-of-pocket costs that have actually been incurred due to the unsatisfactory performance of the vehicle, including most expenses charged for ineffective repairs, towing costs, rental cars and similar transportation costs actually paid by the consumer as a direct result of the defective vehicle repeatedly being serviced and while out-of-service. The Scope Of Our Expert Consultation Services Please note that we still do not intend to take on any new plaintiff cases on any sort of contingent fee basis. We will continue selecting only very meritorious plaintiff cases in which to become involved, either as consulting attorneys or as possible co-counsel attorneys, but only in very select meritorious litigation cases only. Since our professional efforts are now focused on providing expert pre-litigation legal advice and on providing expert pre-litigation consultation to very selected plaintiffs and assistance to their other competent litigation attorneys, we have reduced our legal fees very substantially. Please refer to our newly published Fee Policy below. Contact a Florida trial lawyer at The Minnick Law Firm today. The Minnick Law FirmA Florida Employment, Labor, Consumer Protection, and Civil Rights Law Firm Specializing in Expert Consultation Services for Selected Clients2815 Remington Green Circle, Ste 200 |  |          |