Articles Posted in Alternative Dispute Resolution

Dallas Employment Trial Lawyer Austin Campbell

Summary: This article discusses some strategies, including different contract clauses, that employers might use to try to control where you can sue them, or to try to sue you in a far-away place. 

If you are in a legal dispute with your employer, where the lawsuit is filed can make a big difference.  That affects who the judge is or who might be on the jury.  Exactly where a lawsuit can be filed depends on the nature of the legal claims in it.  However, two basic principles generally apply.  If there are multiple permissible options of where to file suit, the party filing suit gets to choose where to file suit.  However, the location must be somewhere that has “personal jurisdiction” over the defendant—i.e., the defendant has to have sufficient connections to the location for it to be legally “fair” to sue them there.  This article, however, explores ways that employers may try to get around these basic principles through contracts containing “forum selection” or “venue selection” clauses.