Why Interns Sue

High-profile organizations that have had to confront intern lawsuits now include Fox Searchlight Pictures, NBCUniversal (Saturday Night Live), Sony’s Columbia Recordings Corp. and The New Yorker. An insurance coverage attorney from Dickstein Shapiro looks at some of the common denominators in these actions, and he advises any company that is a potential target to look carefully at a particular U.S. Department of Labor fact sheet that clarifies some crucial distinctions between an intern and a garden variety underpaid employee. (Example: If the intern is routinely required to do tasks with little or no educational value, the company may be on shaky ground.)