Here's just a small sampling of the kinds of projects that Ramsland Law works on:

Ruoff Mortgage advertising with name and image of employees no longer working there…

Ramsland Law is currently investigating and pursuing clients’ legal claims for Ruoff Mortgage violating clients’ rights of publicity. The lawsuits allege and evidence shows that Ruoff Mortgage has been sending emails, using website materials, and having very direct customer contact using the names and pictures of former employees.

Why is this a problem? Ruoff is trading on - and making money on - the names and faces of people who are making their living elsewhere. Under Indiana law these people have a right of publicity - that they are the ones who get to use their name, picture, and other aspects of their likeness for commercial gain. You can sell the right - like a professional athlete endorsing a product - but Wheaties can’t just put your face on a box of cereal without your permission.

That’s exactly what these lawsuit allege - that Ruoff continued to trade on the names and pictures of folks who no longer worked there.

Unpaid Overtime claim

Large corporation with a global footprint employed an employee we’ll call “Ty” as a chef for a greek house on a university campus. The company calls Ty a “manager,” but Ty has virtually no responsibility for managing people, just for ordering and preparing food and staying within budget. Ty doesn’t make any decisions about hiring or firing, and mostly works alone. He doesn’t make important decisions that affect the profitability or core functions of the business.

His employer pays him a salary and so they both treat it like he’s “exempt” from the overtime requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, so he never gets paid extra for working overtime.

But they’re wrong - being salaried does not automatically mean you don’t get overtime! It’s worth a check, because these can be big-time mistakes, shorting employees tens of thousands of dollars! Ty and I worked together to recover the overtime he was owed.

Non-competition issues

Regional home repair business had a sales executive who had a non-compete that supposedly prevented him from competing within 30 miles of any company office, regardless of whether he had worked at that office for any meaningful amount of time.

Arguing that the employer had no legitimate protectable interest in preventing competition where the sales executive had not spent any time cultivating customer relationships, Ramsland Law orchestrated a successful outcome where the client was able to continue working for a competitor in spite of the agreement, because the agreement was overly broad to begin with. It restricted conduct that wouldn’t been unfair for any reason - it was just purely anti-competitive.

Discrimination claim

An employee over 55 was working for a company, meeting all of its legitimate job expectations, and was fired for no apparent reason. Within days, the terminated employee was replaced by a 29 year old doing the same job. Next steps included filing a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to vindicate the employee’s rights.