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David R Gobel is an associate in the Labor Department and a member of the Employment Litigation & Counseling Group.

David Gobel earned his J.D at USC Gould School of Law, where he was a Senior Citations Editor of the USC Journal of Interdisciplinary Law, and part of the executive committee of USC’s Music Law Society. Prior to law school, David worked as a research executive for a marketing research firm in New York.

On February 14, 2024, California State Senator Lola Smallwood-Cuevas introduced Senate Bill 1137 (“SB 1137”), a bill that would make California the first state to specifically recognize the concept of “intersectionality.” Smallwood-Cuevas has stated that SB 1137 “makes it clear that discrimination not only happens based on one protected class, such as race, gender or age, but any combination thereof.”

Specifically, SB 1137 would amend

On September 30, 2023, Governor Newsom signed Senate Bill 553 (“SB 553”) into law.  Among other things, the new legislation added section 6401.9 to the California Labor Code (“Section 6401.9”), which requires that virtually all employers implement a workplace violence prevention plan (“WVPP”) by no later than July 1, 2024.  Now, after months of waiting, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health (“CalOSHA”)

The California Supreme Court has issued its much-anticipated decision in Estrada v. Royalty Carpet Mills, Inc., determining whether Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) claims can be dismissed as unmanageable.  The Court affirmed a lower court’s decision, holding that “trial courts lack inherent authority to strike PAGA claims on manageability grounds”—that is, trial courts may not “dismiss [them] with prejudice.”  Slip op. at 1-2.  In

The Los Angeles Superior Court has bestowed some remarkable gifts upon plaintiffs this holiday season. Two juries have issued gigantic verdicts in favor of individual plaintiffs in separate employment lawsuits within the past month.

On November 16, 2023, in Sosa v. Comerica Bank, a jury delivered a verdict of $14.17 million consisting of $1.17 million in lost earnings (past and future) and $13 million in emotional

California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) is already one of the most employee-friendly state civil rights laws in the country. Until now, it was not clear whether employees could sue not only their direct employers for discrimination and harassment, but also other independent businesses that work on behalf on their employers.

In Raines v. U.S. Healthworks Medical Group, the California Supreme Court ruled

The so-called “Fight for 15” – those widespread protests for a $15 minimum wage – are so passé now!

As of July 1, 2023, West Hollywood takes the crown for the highest mandated minimum wage in the United States at $19.08.  Why they didn’t just top it off at $20 is anyone’s guess.  (Not to be completely outmatched, several other localities raised their minimum wage

The California Supreme Court has held that an employee who makes a whistleblower complaint to his or her employer may bring a retaliation claim under the whistleblower statute (California Labor Code § 1102.5(b)) even if the subject of the complaint was already known.  Previous case law held that an employee whistleblower complaint regarding an alleged violation of the law that was already known to

The long-running feud between California and the “gig economy” shows no sign of ending soon. On April 28, 2023, the State of California submitted a petition to the Ninth Circuit in Olson v. California, No. 21-55757 (9th Cir.), seeking review or a rehearing before a new panel of judges, after a Ninth Circuit panel in March unanimously held that the plaintiffs (Uber, Postmates, and

A California judge has ordered Farmers Insurance to pay almost $2.3 million in attorney’s fees to the lawyers of a successful whistleblower/former in-house attorney who claimed his role as a potential witness in a sex bias class action got him fired. The underlying judgment in favor of the whistleblower was $24.36 million – after the Judge reduced the punitive damages award by more than $131

To properly calculate the overtime rate for a non-exempt employee, employers must first calculate the “regular rate of pay.”  Under federal law, and the laws of most states, the regular rate is determined by dividing the employee’s total weekly remuneration (except for a handful of categories that are specifically excluded, such as gifts and payments for non-working hours) by the total number of hours actually