Continuing an alarming recent pattern of multi-million dollar jury awards (see our earlier post), a Los Angeles jury panel recently awarded $17.4 million to a former employee of the Bureau of Sanitation. The employee claimed he had been retaliated against because he had taken part in “protected activities” and because he had filed a complaint with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
Jury panels in the Los Angeles Superior Court (which is often referred to as “The Bank” by the plaintiffs’ bar) have recently delivered multimillion-dollar verdicts to former-employee plaintiffs. Many employers doing business in California already have insulated themselves from such disasters by adopting comprehensive arbitration regimes, which would require that such cases be heard by a retired judge or employment lawyer rather than a jury
Porter v. Nabors Drilling USA, LP, 2017 WL 1404392 (9th Cir. 2017)
Jeremy Porter, a former employee of Nabors Drilling, filed a complaint alleging various claims against Nabors, including a claim arising under the Private Attorney General Act (“PAGA”). After removing the action to federal court, Nabors moved to compel arbitration of all of Porter’s claims pursuant to an arbitration agreement. Porter agreed to
We recently blogged about Governor Brown signing S.B. 1241, which is now codified as Section 925 of the California Labor Code. The law, which affects venue and choice of law provisions in agreements entered into as a condition of employment, will begin applying to agreements entered into, modified, or extended beginning on January 1, 2017. The text of the law (posted directly below) might appear relatively straight forward, but certain ambiguities and questions concerning the law’s implementation raise several issues, which are discussed in this blog post.
In recent years, some employers doing business in the Golden State have required their employees to sign arbitration and employment agreements that require the employee to sue or arbitrate in – or under the law of – another state. After January 1, 2017, this practice will be illegal unless the employee was represented by legal counsel who assisted in negotiating the out-of-state venue, forum or
Morris v. Ernst & Young, LLP, 2016 WL 4433080 (9th Cir. 2016)
As a condition of employment, Stephen Morris and Kelly McDaniel were required to sign agreements not to join with other employees in bringing legal claims via arbitration against their employer. Morris and McDaniel filed a class and collective action against the company, alleging they had been misclassified as employees exempt from overtime
The latest legislative session has just ended, and, true to form, the California Legislature has added more than a dozen new laws affecting employers doing business in the nation’s largest state. These statutes are in addition to the other six new laws that we reported on in September:
It is no secret that California is no friend to arbitration agreements. As the United States Supreme Court noted in its 2011 opinion in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, “California’s courts have been more likely to hold contracts to arbitrate unconscionable than other contracts,” despite directives from the High Court that arbitration agreements must be placed “upon the same footing as other contracts.”
Not to be outdone by the courts, the California Legislature decided to weigh in on the ongoing battle over arbitration agreements with the introduction of Assembly Bill 465 (“AB 465”) earlier this year.
The Chamber of Commerce has just released its preliminary list of “job killer” bills that have been proposed in the California Legislature. Don’t forget that California remains tied with Louisiana for the fourth highest rate of unemployment in the country at 6.7%.
This year’s list identifies 16 proposed laws, including four new “Increased Labor Costs” mandates and one “Increased Unnecessary Litigation Costs” mandate, which
On January 20, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari filed in CLS Transp. Los Angeles, LLC v. Iskanian, a case in which the California Supreme Court held that waivers of employees’ right to bring representative actions under California’s Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (“PAGA”) are unenforceable under state law. You may read our previous post on the Iskanian decision