Legal Question in Civil Rights Law in Kentucky

Re: Equal protection

A great question!

I dealt with issues like this in the past while serving as a foreign legal consultant in Japan.

Here's the issue: for purposes of applying federal (I gather) law of damages, is the count of the local company aggregated with those of the parent and other subsidiaries of multinational companies? And, more precisely, how is the employee count calculated?

There are at least two other inquiries that need exploration by plainitffs in making this argument. One, your lawyers should scrutinize the tax records and visa applications for all native Japanese staff, because you may be able to find a statement against interest or admission. Usually, these would have been filed by U.S. counsel, so the records should be here in the US and subject to discovery by subpoena.

Second, once you get all employee information wherever located, you need to break the argument up into chunks so that the judge will be persuaded to rule in your favor. Those chunks would be, to start, all employees within the state and their functions within the company, then all employees in the region (federal circuit), and their functions, third, all employees in the US and their functions, finally, all employees in Japan and the US. I wouldn't try to extend it past Japan + US, unless vital company functions that affect commerce within the state are located in London, Dublin, Dubai or somewhere like that.

What I'm proposing, therefore, is a vital functions test and a loction test to determine which employees should be aggregated. Since mos Japanese companies work on a cetain model, you have a pretty good chance, I think, of bringing in more than just those who reside in your state.

I presume a federal action, because states do not have jurisdiction to regulate commerce outside of the state, although California tried to tax worldwide income years ago. Don't recall the outcome, but it was a big problem for Japanese companies in particuar, because they wer buying up everything in California.

Unless your lawyer can find a case on point, this will be one for motions and appeals. Let me know how it turns out!