Thread by @AkivaMCohen

Hey, #LitigationDisasterTourists, it's worth spending some time thinking about how the lawyers for the employees should be approaching this upcoming hearing.

The easy path for an attorney faced with this situation is to focus on how wrong the Judge and hospital are on the law

https://twitter.com/AskAManager/status/1484967544876408838

And absent some information we don't know, they ARE completely wrong here. These are at-will employees. The hospital system can't keep them if they don't want to be there. And you have to say so, forcefully.

But somehow, the judge already rejected that argument. So ...

Were I representing these employees, I'd go a different route. I'd have each employee sign an affidavit declaring that given that their employer just went to court to hold them hostage, they will NEVER, under any circumstances, agree to continue working there.

And come the hearing, I'd say "judge, there's no legal basis to do what their former employer wants you to do. But even if there was - it won't accomplish anything. You can't force them to go work for their former employer, the Thirteenth Amendment still exists"

And in that case, no injunction the judge can give can have any impact on the problem the judge appears interested in solving (the health impact if these folks leave that hospital).

You want to enjoin them anyway? We'll get it reversed on appeal and collect on the bond their former employer had to put up to get the injunction. So you may as well just respect their status as at-will employees and not issue it in the first place

And, I mean, you'd put that a bit more diplomatically.

But if I were handling this case, I'd calibrate my response to focus on the practicalities rather than the legalities, because it seems like that's where this judge's head is.