The recent court opinion in Lively v. Wayfarer Studios LLC et al involves quite literally a Hollywood drama, but it’s chock-full of practical lessons for employers in and outside Tinseltown —particularly those with connections to California. The case touches on alleged worker misclassification, retaliation, and the geographic reach of California’s strict employment laws.
The well-publicized dispute stems from the production of the 2024 film It
The Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (“EFAA”) has dramatically altered the arbitration landscape for workplace harassment claims—but not without creating deep uncertainty. This newly-published article, co-authored by Proskauer Rose LLP’s Tony Oncidi, examines how the statute’s imprecise drafting has fueled years of court battles over the EFAA’s scope, timing, and application. It also explores competing perspectives: calls from plaintiffs’
In Kruitbosch v. Bakersfield Recovery Services, Inc., the California Court of Appeal—for the first time—addressed the issue of employer liability for harassment by a non-supervisory co-worker during non-working hours and off-premises conduct.
A coworker (Lisa Sanders) of plaintiff Steven Kruitbosch allegedly subjected him to crude sexual advances at his home and via his personal cell phone away from the premises of their employer, Bakersfield
Since its enactment, the federal Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act has resulted in plaintiffs’ lawyers tacking on increasingly implausible sexual harassment claims to unrelated garden-variety employment claims in a naked attempt to defeat otherwise enforceable arbitration agreements. Numerous courts across the country have permitted (and thereby encouraged) these poison-pill sexual harassment claims, which have become just the latest weapon plaintiffs are
On April 7, 2025, the California Court of Appeal reversed a whopping $10 million verdict in favor of an employee in a sexual harassment case due to the trial judge’s improper evidentiary rulings and inappropriate comments during the post-judgment phase of trial. Odom v. Los Angeles Cmty. Coll. Dist., No. B327997, 2025 WL 1021951, at *1 (Cal. Ct. App. Apr. 7, 2025).
Sabrena Odom
The California Court of Appeal dealt another blow to arbitration, just months after we reported the last such decision here.
This time, the Court ruled that the federal Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (“EFAA”) overrides state law—even in cases in which the employee has signed an arbitration agreement that explicitly invokes state law favoring arbitration.
Kristin Casey, a former
It’s not like we didn’t tell you so, cuz we did! Just last year, we predicted that the latest assault on employer arbitration rights had the potential to destroy arbitration everywhere in the country. Is Arbitration Becoming “Just Somebody That We Used to Know”? Well, it’s happening, and the most recent salvo (not surprisingly) comes from the Golden State.
On Monday, a California appellate court
As we previously reported, a Los Angeles jury awarded one of the largest verdicts in history in a sexual assault case in June 2024, doling out a massive $900 million verdict in favor of a plaintiff in a suit against billionaire Alkiviades David. This week, however, a Los Angeles County Court found the damages award “shocked the conscience” and ordered the case to go
This week a Los Angeles jury awarded a plaintiff nearly $1 billion in damages for workplace sexual assault. The defendant, billionaire Alkiviades David, suffered a staggering loss when a Los Angeles Superior Court jury doled out a massive $900 million verdict in favor of David’s former employee, who brought suit against him in 2020 alleging years of sexual assault, battery, and harassment. Plaintiff was hired