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With stay-at-home orders and business closings, the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the workforce in ways that most have not experienced in their lifetimes. Many companies have been forced to make difficult decisions, while employees are left frightened, confused, and unsure of their legal rights. The experienced employment litigation attorneys at Shaw Cowart LLC have…

Working at an oilfield is a dangerous job. There’s no question about it. While you accept a certain level of risk as part of this employment, that doesn’t mean you should be hung out to dry if you suffered a serious physical injury. You may be owed workers’ compensation benefits or additional compensation for…

Wage and hour lawsuits involve questions over the amount of wages an employee has earned, or the number of hours they have been working. In recent years, wage and hour lawsuits have been making up the majority of employment law disputes filed each year. Wage and hour claims are often complex and may involve…

The area of employment law is made up of a myriad of type of claims (discrimination, harassment, worker’s compensation, whistleblower claims, etc.) and often a maze of federal, state and local statutes along with any governing law. Often, employees have to satisfy prerequisites prior to taking their case to court and their failure to…

Austin, Texas attorney John Cowart addresses a question about what an employee can take when he or she leaves the company. In many cases, this question is governed by an employment agreement or a non-disclosure agreement. If you are an employee  considering leaving your current employment or if your company is concerned about an…

Failing to get the appropriate coverage for a client is a serious error and one of the most common reasons why insurance agents get sued, accounting for about 24 percent of errors and omissions policy claims according to Insureon, a leading specialty insurance broker. Industry statistics reveal insurance agents do make mistakes and the result is…

This is the second of two posts discussing the enforceability of executive non-compete agreements in Texas. In Part I, we discussed the basics of a non-compete agreement as well as the first prong of Texas’s two-part analysis to determine their enforceability. In this second part of the analysis, we will see how Texas courts…

This is the first of two posts that will discuss the enforceability of executive non-compete agreements in Texas. What are Executive Non-Compete Agreements? Non-compete agreements, also called “restrictive covenants,” are contract provisions through which an employee agrees not to work in a similar trade in competition with an employer, usually in a particular geographical…

Steps a Company should take, including general advice about conducting an investigation Imagine that one of your supervisors discovers that thousands of pages of confidential Company billing and financial information has been downloaded, and e-mailed to a personal e-mail address. Upon further investigation, your supervisor has discovered that an employee has asked other employees…

In Johnson v. Heckmann Water Resources (CVR), Inc., the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by a federal district court in Texas which summarily denied a suit by employees alleging that their former employers violated the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime wage requirements. The appeals court determined that an employer’s…