"Assume that if you do your best to get the pay out, you'll be OK," he said. "Technically, it's a violation of the law."
Finally, the situation will be completely different for union employees, whose terms of employment are governed by their contracts.
"If it's a union situation, you've got to look at the union contract, and that can be very variable," Sparer said.
Despite the various legal issues, attorneys agreed there would not be a major wave of litigation over pay after Sandy, since most employers were responding humanely to the crisis.
"There'll probably be one or two little spats here and there," Sparer said.
Gosseen agreed that a majority of employers would make allowances. Still, he said, "there are employers who will take hard lines."
"I had some of my clients who called me and wanted to take hard lines," he added. "I told them I thought it was crazy."
@|Brendan Pierson can be contacted at bpierson@alm.com.
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A great article and one I'm sure was on people's minds when they tried to figure out how they were going to get paid. I'm not sure if there is legal precedence in a situation where someone sued their employer over their loss of wages due to a natural disaster. However if these types of storms continue, I could see a situation like that coming about.
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