The Short Branch

The employment law mistakes that trigger claims are rarely dramatic. They are ordinary decisions made with good intentions: trusting a job title, letting extra hours go unrecorded, reacting to a complaint, ending a job without a paper trail, and letting an accommodation request sit. Each gives an employee something specific to point to, and each is easier to fix before anyone complains. Many trace back to a decision nobody wrote down or ran past a lawyer. A short review of how you classify, pay, document, and respond to your people covers all five.

Calling Someone Exempt or a Contractor Because of a Label

A title does not decide whether an employee earns overtime. Federal regulations put it plainly: “A job title alone is insufficient to establish the exempt status of an employee.” Exempt status turns on whether the employee’s salary and duties meet the regulation’s requirements. Promoting a coordinator to “manager” without changing the work does not change the answer.

The same goes for contractors. Under the federal wage law, the Supreme Court has said that where the work “follows the usual path of an employee,” putting on an “independent contractor” label does not take the worker from the protection of the Act. Our guide to the classification risks employers often miss shows how that plays out.

The fix: Compare every role to its real duties once a year and whenever the work changes.

Letting Unrecorded Hours Slide

If an employee works and you know or have reason to believe it, you owe for it, even when you did not ask. In the words of the regulations, “Work not requested but suffered or permitted is work time.” Employers must also keep a record of the hours each covered employee works every workday and workweek.

When an employer’s records are inaccurate or inadequate and the employee has no convincing substitute, the employee’s account carries real weight. In Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co., the Supreme Court held that an employee who proves the work and shows its amount “as a matter of just and reasonable inference” shifts the burden to the employer to come forward with evidence of the precise amount of work performed. That is why a missing record becomes the employer’s problem.

The cost of this kind of employment mistake is built into the statute. An employer that breaks the minimum wage or overtime rules is liable for the unpaid amount “and in an additional equal amount as liquidated damages,” plus a reasonable attorney’s fee and costs. A court can reduce that extra amount only if the employer shows good faith and reasonable grounds to believe it was following the law, and the claim can reach back two years, or three for a willful violation. A misclassified employee who is owed overtime triggers the same math.

The fix: Capture all time worked, and tell managers not to accept unrecorded work.

Reacting to a Complaint with a Reassignment

Retaliation is an employment law mistake that creates its own claim, separate from the complaint that came first. Title VII bars an employer from discriminating against an employee “because he has opposed any practice made an unlawful employment practice.” The Florida Civil Rights Act says nearly the same thing, and both apply to employers with 15 or more employees. The federal wage law separately protects a covered employee who has filed a complaint under the wage law. Florida’s Private Whistleblower Act separately covers an employee who objected to or refused to take part in a practice that violates a law, rule, or regulation, but only for employers with ten or more persons.

Retaliation reaches beyond firing. In Burlington Northern v. White, the Supreme Court asked whether an employer’s action “well might have dissuaded a reasonable worker from making or supporting a charge of discrimination,” and held that a jury could treat a reassignment of duties within the same job description as materially adverse.

A well-meaning manager who reshuffles a complaining employee’s duties can create exactly that risk.

The fix: Once a complaint is logged, route any change to that employee’s pay, duties, or status through one person, with the business reason written first. Our piece on proactive employment policies explains how.

Ending a Job Without a Paper Trail

A reason that lives only in a manager’s memory is easy to contradict. In the age discrimination case Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Products, the Supreme Court held that an employee’s prima facie case, combined with sufficient evidence that the employer’s stated reason is false, “may permit the trier of fact to conclude that the employer unlawfully discriminated.”

The Florida Civil Rights Act, which covers employers with 15 or more employees, lists the traits it protects: race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy, national origin, age, handicap, and marital status. A decision that looks neutral can still be challenged if one of them was the real reason.

The fix: Before the meeting, write down the reason, the dates, the policy involved, and who approved it. Our walkthrough on how to terminate an employee legally covers the steps.

Overlooking an Accommodation Request

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, not making reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified employee with a disability counts as discrimination unless the employer can show undue hardship. The Act reaches employers with 15 or more employees, and the regulations add that it may be necessary to start an informal, interactive process with the employee who needs the accommodation. A manager who answers “we’ll see” and moves on has made a decision, just not one anyone wrote down.

The fix: Send every accommodation request to one person the same day, talk with the employee, and record what was discussed and decided.

Why Owners Keep Making These Employment Law Mistakes

Every fix above is a short review. Owners skip it for a simple reason: hourly billing teaches you to ration questions, so employment law mistakes wait until they are expensive.

A flat-fee membership removes that hesitation. Longevity works as an ad hoc, in-house legal team for member companies, so streamlined work like reviewing a classification, a timekeeping policy, an accommodation response, or a termination plan fits inside one predictable fee. Complex litigation is still billed traditionally because it cannot be scoped at the outset, but the review that helps keep these employment law mistakes from becoming claims should never be a budget decision.

The Day You Give Someone a Salaried Title

That day is the time to ask whether the duties match. If they do not, you may owe the unpaid overtime plus an equal amount in liquidated damages, unless a court finds you acted in good faith. A Longevity membership gives you one predictable fee, so the question gets asked before the offer letter goes out. All Longevity Legal Plans services are provided by Jimerson Birr, P.A., based in Jacksonville, Florida. The next time a title goes on an offer letter, you should already know who will read it.