For the second time this calendar year, a Los Angeles jury ordered an employer to pay $11 million to an employee who claimed to have been sexually harassed. And, once again, the amount of punitive damages ($8 million) dwarfed the amount of compensatory damages ($3.1 million) by a margin of more than two-to-one.
On Friday, the jury ruled against Alki David, a hologram producer
On Tuesday, April 16, 1-2 pm PDT, Tony Oncidi will be joining the Employment Roundtable of Southern California (ERTSC) and presenting the webinar, A Quick Legal Update of New Employment Laws and Cases.
The New Year rang in nearly twenty new employment laws. 2018 and 2019 have produced dozens and dozens of significant employment cases. Whether you are an experienced human resources expert/employment attorney or
Just another day in paradise in Los Angeles… Unless you happen to be an employer. Continuing the recent spate of multi-million dollar verdicts, an LA jury awarded a former police officer $7 million on her sex discrimination claim.
Lili Hadsell, a former police chief for the City of Baldwin Park, alleged that she was subjected to sex discrimination over her 14 years of service.
There they go again! As we predicted last November, the California legislature is once again trying to outlaw arbitration agreements between employers and employees. Former Gov. Jerry Brown routinely vetoed similar bills that sought to prohibit arbitration of employment disputes on the anodyne ground that such legislation unquestionably conflicts with and is preempted by federal law. (Gov. Brown’s veto message.) However, with
The current landscape in the #MeToo Era has heightened the need for leaders at every business organization to ensure that sound and strategically aligned practices for preventing, receiving, and responding to harassment, discrimination and other workplace related claims are in place.
Proskauer has just released its findings from a broad-based survey of employers around the country who are responding to these pressing issues in real
The Los Angeles Times published a piece addressing the recent and abrupt change in the rules for determining who is and who is not an independent contractor in California. As is so often the case, there are many unanticipated consequences associated with these new rules.
Read the full piece here: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-dynamex-contractors-20190223-story.html
Proving it still is possible to obtain a favorable jury verdict in California (see contrary evidence), a federal jury sided with Chipotle Mexican Grill last Wednesday in a case involving disability discrimination claims by former assistant store manager, Lucia Cortez.
Cortez alleged she suffered a miscarriage at work after years of trying to get pregnant, fell into a depression, and then needed extended
We have reported before about the huge jury verdicts that get handed out in California with alarming regularity and California’s sustained #1 ranking as the “Top Judicial Hellhole” in the nation. A corollary problem continues unabated: The prevalence of class actions and lawsuits under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA).
Though California accounts for 12% of the population of the United States (yes, one in
The California Court of Appeal affirmed dismissal of a former freelancer’s defamation and employment-related claims against the Times. Frederick Theodore Rall III, a political cartoonist and blogger for the paper, brought claims for defamation, wrongful termination, intentional infliction of emotion distress, and retaliation, among others, stemming from the Times’ decision to disassociate itself with Rall and issue a “note to readers,” questioning the
A Los Angeles jury awarded more than $11 million to two former employees who claimed they were sexually harassed and retaliated against for complaining about the harassment.
Megan Meadowcroft and Amber Brown, who worked at the Keyways Vineyard and Winery in Temecula, California, alleged they had been harassed by the general manager, Carlos Pineiro.
Meadowcroft and Brown filed an FEHA sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit,