Counselor's Corner

Releases
In Reed v. University of North Dakota, the North Dakota Supreme Court upheld the enforceability of a general release of liability and dismissed a personal injury lawsuit against UND and another defendant. In the case, a former hockey player at UND had become dehydrated during a charity road race and suffered severe injuries to his kidneys and liver. The race was a charity benefit, but was also a part of the hocky teams conditioning program. One of the issues of this case involved the enforceability of a release signed before the race. Read more...

Sick Leave Payout
NDSU Policy 143, and state law, provide that employees who terminate employment with 10 years of continuous state service shall receive a payroll equivalent of 10% of the dollar value of their accrued sick leave hours. This is given in a lump sum payment based on the employee's salary at the time of termination. Read more...

Volunteer Protection Act of 1997
A new federal law entitled the Volunteer Protection Act of 1997 was passed on June 18, 1997, with a goal to promote volunteerism by reducing the fear of liability by volunteers on behalf of nonprofit organizations and state educational institutions. The Act restricts liability of volunteers who are within the scope of their employment and who are not willful or grossly negligent. This protection does not apply, however, to acts involving motor vehicles, crimes of violence, hate crimes, sexual offenses, violations of civil rights, and cases involving intoxication. Read more...

Administrative Remedies - Long v. Samson
The North Dakota Supreme Court held recently, in Long v. Samson, reaffirmed the rule that employees of higher education insititutions must exhaust their administrative remedies at the university priot to bringing suit. This case, like Thompson v. Peterson, a case arising at NDSU, involved probationary faculty who, after a nonrenewal, filed a lawsuit rather than appealing to the Special Review Committee and Standing Committee on Faculty Rights. Read more...

Military Leave
Annual training time for many military reservists is just around the corner. The laws and rules regarding military leave can be fairly complicated although the basic rule is that reservists must be allowed leave for military duty and cannot be discriminated against because of their military status and leave time. Read more...

Legal Watch

Copyright Fair Use for Educators
Copyright fair use is one of those areas where everone has an opinion about it, but nobody is really sure what it is! The purpose of this outline is to provide educators with some general background about the fair use exception to copyright infringement. Read more...

FERPA for Faculty
FERPA stands for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which is a federal law passed in 1974. It is also commonly known as the Budkley Amendment. The law protects the privacy of student educational records and provides rights to students for access to and amendment of those records. TERPA applies to any higher education institutions receiving federal funds administered by the Department of Education (DOE). Read more...

Official Personnel Records - Notice & Access
An area that is a potential trap for higher education administrators is the improper handling of official personnel records. Specifically, supervisors need to understand that the requirement of N.D.C.C. Section 54-06-21 covering public employee personnel records, filing of documents in those records, and access. In particular, in the past, records relating to faculty have tended to be much more diverse and spread out than records relating to classified employees, and this has caused some problems. Read more...

Political Activities on Campus
University employees, students and visitors should be aware of laws and University regulations affecting political campaigns and activities on campus and restrictions on the use of State property. State laws can be comeshat confusing in this area in that some laws apply to elections for candidates rather than elections on ballot measures. However, manhy of the restrictions are the same. Read more...

Veterans Preference
Supervisors with hiring resposibility at NDSU must be aware of North Dakota's Veteran's Preference Law. Lack of familiarity with the law may cause major hiring problems. Read more...