{"id":772,"date":"2014-12-28T11:45:08","date_gmt":"2014-12-28T11:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/?p=772"},"modified":"2023-04-20T13:17:04","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T17:17:04","slug":"2014-year-review-employment-law-whistleblowers-protection-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/employment-law-2\/2014-year-review-employment-law-whistleblowers-protection-act\/","title":{"rendered":"2014 Year in Review &#8211; Employment Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A. Whistleblowers&#8217; Protection Act<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.courts.ri.gov\/Courts\/SupremeCourt\/Opinions\/11-360.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Russo v. State, 87 A.3d 399 (R.I. 2014)<\/a>: In Russo, the Rhode Island Supreme Court addressed an issue of first impression concerning the interpretation of Rhode Island\u2019s<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_773\" style=\"width: 280px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/12\/Picture41.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-773\" class=\"size-full wp-image-773\" src=\"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2014\/12\/Picture41.jpg\" alt=\"Image courtesy of suphakit73 at Freedigitalphotos.net \" width=\"270\" height=\"405\" title=\"\"><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-773\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image courtesy of suphakit73 at Freedigitalphotos.net<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Whistleblowers\u2019 Protection Act (the \u201cWPA\u201d). The WPA provides, in relevant part:<\/p>\n<p>An employer shall not discharge, threaten, or otherwise discriminate against an employee regarding the employees\u2019 compensation, terms, conditions, location, or privileges of employment:<br \/>\na. Because the employee, or person acting on behalf of the employee, reports or is about to report to a public body, verbally or in writing, a violation which the employee knows or reasonably believes has occurred or is about to occur, of a law or regulation or rule promulgated under the law of this state, a political subdivision of this state, or the United States, unless the employee knows or has reason to know that the report is false . . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<p>R.I. Gen. Laws \u00a7 28-50-3(1).<\/p>\n<p>In Russo, the Supreme Court held that an employer\u2019s placement of an employee on paid administrative leave does not constitute an adverse employment decision akin to discharging, threatening or otherwise discriminating against the employee. Indeed, administrative leave with pay is not considered a suspension and it has been deemed to be \u201ca reasonable means of coping with a problematic workplace situation while only \u2018minimally affecting\u2019 the employee.\u201d Consequently, an employee placed on paid administrative leave cannot claim a violation of the WPA.<\/p>\n<p><strong>B. Independent Contractors<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>See Cayer v. Cox Rhode Island Telecom, LLC:<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/decisions\/rhode-island-businesses-controlling\/\">https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/decisions\/rhode-island-businesses-controlling\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A. Whistleblowers&#8217; Protection Act Russo v. State, 87 A.3d 399 (R.I. 2014): In Russo, the Rhode Island Supreme Court addressed an issue of first impression concerning the interpretation of Rhode Island\u2019s Whistleblowers\u2019 Protection Act (the \u201cWPA\u201d). The WPA provides, in relevant part:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[18,81,14,102],"class_list":["post-772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment-law-2","tag-appellate-practice","tag-employment-law","tag-rhode-island-supreme-court","tag-whistleblower"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.apslaw.com\/on-appeal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}