Christopher Calnan

A former Ohio college football coach claimed in a lawsuit recently that he was fired for taking paternity leave.

Paul Harker, former strength and conditioning coach for Miami University, alleges in the suit that officials told him after his twins were born in January 2017 his contract wouldn’t be renewed. It also alleges that after he took unpaid leave following the births, head coach Chuck Martin told Harker he needed to be either a coach or a “family man,” according to the suit filed in the U.S. District Court for South district of Ohio.

The university and Martin allegedly violated the Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, a federal law that guarantees certain workers up to 12 workweeks of unpaid leave without any threat of job loss. The law, which was enacted in 1993, also requires employers to maintain health benefits for eligible workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

A Connecticut public health advocacy group is urging localities to spend money on athletic fields of real grass instead of synthetic turf until high quality studies can be completed.

The Environment and Human Health Inc. is reporting that 22 studies cited by the synthetic turf industry are scientifically inconsistent yet reveal that playing on the fields embedded with shredded tires increase exposure to toxic chemicals and metals.

“Although industry admits that many studies find numerous toxic compounds, they claim that the levels are too low to be dangerous to human health,” the report indicates. “Yet the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences reports that even when there is low-level exposure to an individual chemical that might not cause cancer, when many low-level chemicals act together they can indeed cause cancer.”

Maryland-based Synthetic Turf Council Inc. President and CEO Dan Bond, said the EHHI has a history of “cherry-picking half-truths” that mislead the public.

“The fact is EHHI completely ignores multiple recent research reports and statements from Washington State, the European Chemicals Agency, the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, and FIFA that support the safety of synthetic turf fields,” he said in a news release. “This is in addition to the more than 90 peer-reviewed academic studies, third-party reports and federal and state government analyses that have not found public health concerns from playing on synthetic turf fields with recycled rubber infill.”

About 12,000 athletic fields in the United States are using synthetic turf, according to published reports.

Allegations of greedy law firms and finance businesses related to settlement payments to former National Football League players are taking on a greater sense of urgency as the claims start to be paid despite more-frequently-than-expected claim audits.

Concerns about deceptive practices amid slow payments to former players and their families prompted a hearing in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Some companies are attempting to charge players contingency fees for guiding them through the claims process. Also, some lawyers allegedly stand to receive contingency fees as high as 40 percent in addition to payments from a $112.5 million legal fund set up by the NFL.

It’s notable that the players’ co-lead attorney, Christopher Seeger, founding partner of New York-based Seeger Weiss, is the only attorney allowed to present evidence of alleged deceptive practices during Tuesday’s hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Anita B. Brody. Seeger is seeking $51 million for his firm’s work on the $1 billion class-action case, ESPN reported in March.

Based on more than 21,000 hours over four years, Seeger’s firm is citing $18.1 million in fees. He’s also seeking $6.8 million for himself coupled with a multiplier of 2.6 to fees and expenses.

A longstanding law has protected professional baseball from litigious injured fans, but teams are increasingly taking measures to guard against the unsavory optics produced by errant balls and bats.

The so-called Baseball Rule shields teams and puts the onus on baseball fans to take responsibility for their safety while attending games. Yet changes to ballparks have narrowed the distance between players and spectators so risk-conscious teams are installing additional protective netting.

From a legal standpoint, the courts generally rule in favor of the park owners. In November 2016, a U.S. District Court judge of the Northern District of California dismissed a class action lawsuit involving Major League Baseball seeking additional safety netting at ballparks.

The complaint was prompted by two MLB fans injured in separate incidents at both the Oakland Coliseum and Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium. Judge Gonzalez Rogers ruled that MLB’s evidence produced no “credible or immediate threat” that the Oakland A’s fan would be hit by a foul ball or bat and she failed to show that a legal standing was independently established due to “deprivation of her ability to enjoy the game.”

The experience of a new Austin-based online art dealer demonstrates the dangers of advertising campaigns that rely on sex appeal.

Twyla Inc. has pulled a Facebook ad after receiving negative reviews; experts disagree on whether the dustup will affect the startup’s business.

The company, with former HomeAway Inc. CEO Brian Sharples as chairman, posted ads under the heading “Get some” that featured a photo of a young woman removing or putting on a white top. The photo was overwritten with the words “Recently single. Buy art.”

On Oct. 13, Art F City, a New York-based art news website, referred to Twyla’s advertisement as “the most offensive art ad on the Internet.”

Cirrus Logic Inc.’s plan to relocate next year as many as 250 of its workers from a Sixth Street office tower popular with tech companies would leave vacant some highly sought downtown office space.

Cirrus Logic (Nasdaq: CRUS), a fast-growing Austin semiconductor maker, plans to move the workers from two floors of 300 W. Sixth St. into five floors of the Shoal Creek Walk tower under construction at West Sixth and Bowie streets, one block from Cirrus Logic’s headquarters at the corner of Sixth Street and West Avenue and across the street from Whole Foods Market Inc.’s headquarters. Cirrus Logic, which generates a large amount of business from Apple Inc. devices, has filled up its entire headquarters building since it was finished in 2012, spokesman Bill Schnell said.

The British keep coming — to Austin.

Another England-based financial technology company is opening its U.S. headquarters in downtown Austin. Big data analytics firm Hello Soda, operated by Soda Software Labs Ltd., is taking an office at the WeWork co-working space on Congress Avenue.

Hello Soda, which was founded in 2013 by three former executives of credit rating service CallCredit Ltd., developed an analytics platform called Profile designed to extract credit risk information from unstructured data. Its purpose is to verify identifications and detect fraud, assess risk and increase financial inclusion.

Austin’s clean technology industry got some national recognition Wednesday with a visit by Secretary of State John Kerry who said improved energy technology is lowering the price of alternative energy and increasing infrastructure investments.

Kerry spent about 90 minutes at the University of Texas’ J.J. Pickle Research Campus where he met with energy industry executives and researchers after touring the laboratories in the Microelectronics Research Center. Several UT officials, including President Gregory Fenves, also attended.

The meeting was largely a briefing of Texas experts’ views on the grid and energy infrastructure, said Michael Skelly, president of Clean Line Energy Partners LLC, a Houston-based company that develops long-haul transmission lines to connect renewable energy sources.

The clean technology industry has grown significantly in the Austin area and it’s expected to continue expanding in coming years. The industry employs nearly 20,000 workers and contributes an estimated $2.5 billion to the Central Texas economy, according to an Austin Technology Incubator report released in mid-2015.