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Salvatore G. Gangemi has been named by Super Lawyers list as one of the top attorneys in New York State for 2011. No more than 5 percent of the lawyers in the state are selected by Super Lawyers. Digital version of Super Lawyers 2011 Magazine.

Super Lawyers, a Thomson Reuters business, is a rating service of outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. The annual selections are made using a rigorous multi-phased process that includes a statewide survey of lawyers, an independent research evaluation of candidates, and peer reviews by practice area.

The Super Lawyers lists are published nationwide in Super Lawyers magazines and in leading city and regional magazines across the country. Super Lawyers magazines also feature editorial profiles of attorneys who embody excellence in the practice of law. For information about Super Lawyers, go to superlawyers.com.

Two interns filed a lawsuit in federal court in New York City alleging that Fox Searchlight Pictures, the producer of “Black Swan,” misclassified them as unpaid interns despite that they engaged in work, typically performed by paid employees. Among other things, the interns alleged that they performed work such as making coffee, taking out trash, and handling lunch orders.
We wrote about the issue of misclassification of workers as unpaid interns in our May 25, 2010 blog, Department of Labor Issues Guidelines on Unpaid Internships. To be valid, an internship must provide an educational experience, and not just amount to an unpaid job. In recent years, both the United States Department of Labor and New York State Department of Labor have scrutinized internships to make sure that they are legitimate.
Both federal and New York law require that employees be paid the minimum wage for hours worked, as well as overtime for hours worked in excess of 40 in a given workweek. Thus, if the court rules that the interns, who worked at Fox Searchlight Pictures, were really employees, the movie studio will be liable for failure to pay minimum wage and overtime pay.

On September 15, 2011, a class of current and former exotic dancers filed a claim against The Executive Club LLC d/b/a The Penthouse Executive Club, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging wage and hour violations. Specifically, the lawsuit against the New York club alleges that the dancers were not paid the applicable minimum wage and overtime pay. In addition, the dancers allege that their tips were misappropriated by the club’s management. The complaint asserts claims under the New York Labor Law as well as the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
A critical issue in the case is whether the dancers were properly classified as independent contractors. The dancers allege that they were actually “employees” based upon the club’s exercise of control over their work. If the court finds that the dancers were, in fact, common law employees, then the New York Labor Law and Fair Labor Standards Act will apply to the dancers, and could result in liability for unpaid wages.

On September 14, 2011, Salvatore G. Gangemi was quoted in an article entitled, How To Quit Without Giving Notice, which appeared in a Wall Street Journal Digital Network publication. The article can be accessed from the Firm News section of our website by clicking the following link: How to Quit Without Giving Notice.

Salvatore G. Gangemi was recently selected by his peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® 2012 in the field of Employment Law (Copyright 2011 by Woodward/White, Inc., of Aiken, S.C.).
Since its inception in 1983, Best Lawyers has become universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence. Because Best Lawyers is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey in which more than 41,000 leading attorneys cast almost 3.9 million votes on the legal abilities of other lawyers in their practice areas, and because lawyers are not required or allowed to pay a fee to be listed, inclusion in Best Lawyers is considered a singular honor. Corporate Counsel magazine has called Best Lawyers “the most respected referral list of attorneys in practice.”

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