Employment attorney is at leading edge of developments

Daniel Eaton

Title: Partner at Seltzer, Caplan, McMahon and Vitek. Also teaches employment law courses at San Diego State University.

Age: 49

Born: New York City

Lives: Downtown San Diego

College: Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service, 1984

Law school: Harvard University, 1989

Fun fact: Eaton attended Harvard Law School a year behind Michelle Obama and two years ahead of Barack Obama, knowing both.

Worked: As a Senate aide to Arlen Specter between college and law school.

Covered: Student government as a reporter for the Georgetown Hoya, the university’s main student newspaper.

As it is with so many areas of life, the Internet is changing the nature of the workplace.

Employees carry smartphones that give them constant access to their friends. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are easy distractions. And the digital world gives employees an outlet to express themselves publicly, for better or worse.

The access to social media and laws around it is unpredictable. But when new developments occur, one person at the leading edge is Daniel Eaton, an employment attorney with the San Diego firm Seltzer, Caplan, McMahon and Vitek.

“The whole issue of the Internet has changed the law of the workplace in a fascinating way that really couldn’t have been predicted when I first got into this business, and yet the essential human nature of the employer-employee dynamic and the law that covers it remains,” said Eaton, 49.

The latest rule to note? Eaton said it’s a law going into effect Jan. 1 that generally makes it illegal in California for employers to demand social media passwords from employees and applicants.

Eaton, going on 15 years with the firm, recently caught up with U-T San Diego to talk about aspects of California employment law, past, present and future. He became interested in practicing workplace law in the 1980s, when he handled those issues as an aide to the late Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

Eaton, who mostly represents employers, also makes himself available to local media — including the U-T — to answer questions about how laws apply to certain workplace situations.

“I like to think when I do those sorts of things I am in a sense educating the broader public, and I’m always learning,” said Eaton, also an adjunct professor at San Diego State University.

Here are some of Eaton’s thoughts on issues facing California’s workforce.

Q: What’s the biggest uncertainty in employment law moving forward?

A: The toughest thing is going to be to what extent the growing availability of the Internet affects an employee’s expectation of privacy. How is it that employers and employees deal with the increasing complexity that the Internet, that computers, that mobile devices bring to the workplace? There are a whole bunch of issues that I cannot even predict right now that affect the law of the workplace that will be common talk among employment lawyers in the next 10 years.

Q: There’s an odd conundrum when it comes to California employment. Jobs here are “at will,” meaning an employee can quit at anytime and be fired at any time, with or without cause. Then why does it matter if someone is fired for doing something wrong?


