Hey Westlaw Louisiana’s Non-Compete Statute IS DIFFERENT from the Statute on Employer Immunity Background Checks !

Background checks are extremely important in the trucking business. They are regularly at issue in the litigation of cases of negligent hiring. Recently, when reviewing changes in the law regarding employee background checks (LSA R.S. 23:291), I noticed that several cases cited the statute addressing  non-compete agreements. 

For example, Elite Coil Tubing Solutions, LLC v. Guillory 93 So.3d 861, (La. App. 2 Cir. 2012) and Bellard v. Gautreaux 675 F.3d 454 (La App. 5 Cir 2012) referenced the statute giving an employer qualified when  checking  a prospective employee’s background.

I was trying to figure out HOW an immunity statute had anything to do with a non-compete agreement, but I figured out that the citations transposed ONE number. The non-compete statute is LSA R.S. 23:921, while the immunity statute is LSA R.S. 23:291.

I was surprised that there was insufficient proofreading by someone in the appellate courts. Then again, it’s completely understandable to transpose a number, right? Maybe not since there are over 500 cases accurately citing the non-compete statute.

There aren't as many references to the employer immunity for background statute, but there are some excellent law review articles and the procedure to conduct background checks has been addressed in a few law review articles. So I assumed someone was “cutting and pasting” too much because I noticed the same erroneous citation in the following cases:

1. Emergency Staffing Solutions, Inc. v. Morehouse Parish Hosp. Service Dist. No. 1 2011 WL 1337371, (W.D.La 2011),
2. Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. v. Babcock 2011 WL 121891, (E.D.La. 2011),  
3. Arthur J. Gallagher Risk Management Services, Inc. v. Todd 2010 WL 2179753, (La.App. 3 Cir. 2010)
4. West Carroll Health System, LLC v. Tilmon  93 So.3^rd  1131 (La. App 2 Cir 2012)

To be clear, I make mistakes regularly...er uh...occasionally; however when SIX of the most recent cases dealing with NON-COMPETE agreements referenced the employer immunity statute, something was troubling. Knowing that this could not be accurate, I pulled up the official citation, which costs more to use, for each of these cases and discovered that the statute was accurately cited in the official text, but WESTLAW made a mistake in transposing the numbers in the unofficial overview of the cases and statutes.

Thanks Westlaw, I wasted an hour reviewing the cases that inaccurately referenced the incorrect statute. Westlaw, please make sure you have better proof-reading!

To assist employers and attorneys who want to review the law on properly conducting background checks of prospective employees, the statute is LSA-R.S. 23:291

§ 291. Disclosure of employment related information; presumptions; causes of action; definitions

Non-Trucking, but Perhaps the Biggest Religious Liberty Decision Influenced by Local Attorney from Shreveport, LA

The following was shared with me by my friend, Mike Johnson. I wish I could claim any part of this. At least I can share the good news and hard work, and be reminded that when he first started with the ADF he shared space with me at 401 Market Street, Suite 900. I could not be more honored for my friend.

"As I discussed this morning with Tim Brando and have explained in several other interviews over the past 24 hrs, the 5-4 victory for public prayer in Town of Greece v. Galloway, is perhaps the biggest religious liberty decision in decades, and will have far-reaching implications.  What I haven't said publicly is that the Lord told me all of this was going to happen one night at our little kitchen table in late June 2007.  Kelly remembers the night very well.

 

At the time, I was serving as Senior Legal Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), and had been responding to our organization's growing number of calls for advice and assistance from city councils and county boards around the country. It seemed public officials everywhere had begun receiving the same basic threat letter from the ACLU and other radical secularist groups that these public bodies must immediately cease opening their meetings with prayer (or at the very least censor the prayers so that the name of JESUS could never be mentioned again).

 

Of course, this demand ignored more than two centuries of cherished tradition in our country and was a gross and intentional misinterpretation of the First Amendment's guarantee of religious freedom.  But to my alarm, many local and state governmental bodies simply gave in to the threats to avoid the cost of a lawsuit, and tragically stopped opening their meetings with prayer.  

 

After responding and trying to cover so many of these skirmishes in such rapid fashion, I was praying that night in June 2007 about what we needed to do to address these attacks more efficiently.  The Lord spoke to my heart and specifically gave me the idea to carefully craft a model prayer policy and a lengthy legal information letter that we could send out to local public bodies in a nationwide initiative, accompanied by a guarantee if any public officials adopted our policy and got sued--we would defend them free of charge.  In short, the Lord impressed upon my heart very clearly that it was time to play offense.  The Lord told me very specifically that this would be a pivotal battle in our country's history and that we would ultimately PREVAIL on it at the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

The Lord made this SO clear to me that I jumped up from the table and excitedly explained to Kelly the entire vision and exactly what I felt the Lord showing me would happen.  Over the next several days, I sold my ADF colleagues on the plan and crafted the legal information letter and model policy that I was convinced would ultimately pass constitutional muster and save the tradition of uncensored public invocations.