In an article published by Law360, Bass, Berry & Sims attorney Tim Garrett provided insight on the continued increase in employment discrimination lawsuits, which may be due in part to fee-shifting in such lawsuits. Fee-shifting is a mechanism by which a prevailing party in a lawsuit can require the losing party to pay the reasonable attorneys’ fees of the prevailing party. The concept sounds fair, but in employment discrimination cases the only party who benefits from fee-shifting is the employee. Employers are hopeful that a new law recently passed in Ohio will start a new trend to reverse what employers perceive as unfairly one-sided fee-shifting. Time will tell whether a new trend has begun, and the new law at least may spark an interesting public policy debate.
The full article, “A New Fee-Shifting Trend In Employer Discrimination Cases?,” was published by Law360 on April 18, 2017, and is available online.
Tim also wrote on this topic in a HR Law Talk blog post on March 31, 2017.