If you are a business owner that has invested resources in hiring and training your employees, or given them access to valuable proprietary information during their employment, then you should take some steps to protect that investment.

Whether you’re conducting an employee investigation into sexual harassment, embezzlement or any other kind of improper conduct occurring with employees during work hours or on work property, there are four key elements to an effective investigation. 

No sensible businessperson would leave money lying around the office or keys to the company car in the ignition. But sometimes the most important assets of a company, its “trade secrets,” are left completely unprotected.

Imagine one of your employees leaves for the competition or starts their own competing business with your market strategies or ideas for new products.

Employer-ism voyeurism. Modern American society seems obsessed with peering in on one’s generally private thoughts and moments.

Problem: Human resources issues become more complex every day with new and ever changing federal and state employment regulations.

Punitive damages, or exemplary damages, are those that a judge or jury can award over and above compensatory damages, like lost wages, to punish a losing party’s willful or malicious misconduct.

A New York judge recently ruled that a hospital’s e-mail policy means messages sent by a physician to his lawyers are not protected by attorney-client privilege.

TRAVERSE CITY — A circuit court judge ordered Blair Township to pay mediation costs and legal fees in a labor dispute with a former zoning administrator.

The Illinois Bar Journal recently reported that alternative billing arrangements for legal fees (other than by the hour) are coming to Main Street America.