Year: 2012
Score another for plaintiffs in the ongoing evolution of arbitration rules
Following California law on mandatory arbitration of employment claims is a little like watching a tennis match; rulings keep going back and forth between employers and employees. The latest in the ongoing volley, Franco v. Arakelian Enterprises, Inc., is clearly a...
Hate crime law used in case of sex harassment
Using what a judge described as a "novel and unprecedented" approach, an employee in Southern California invoked a relatively obscure law created to redress race violence to recover almost $600,000 in damages and fees for sex harassment. The case of Ventura v. ABM...
HR director who hid that she hadn’t signed her arbitration agreement still can’t be forced to arbitrate
A California appellate court ruled that an employee who misled her employer into thinking she had signed an arbitration agreement could still refuse to arbitrate because she never signed. In Gorlach v. The Sports Club Company, the employee, a former Human Resources...
More loopholes in employee arbitration agreements
Despite recent rulings from the Supreme Court, employee arbitration agreements might not be as rock-solid as some employers believe. In Elijahjuan v. Superior Court (Mike Campbell & Associates), a California appellate court held that a narrowly-tailored...
Employees lose reporting time claim, must pay employer’s fees
That's the bad news. The only good news is, the employees who lost the case of Aleman v. AirTouch Cellular will likely have to pay less than the $140,000 each that the trial court originally ordered them to pay. In 2007, a group of employees, including Daniel Krofta...
Workers’ compensation discrimination not “wrongful termination,” court rules
An esoteric distinction, but a firm one nonetheless. In Dutra v. Mercy Medical Center Mt. Shasta, an employee sued the hospital where she worked for defamation and wrongful termination in violation of California public policy. The employee, who worked as a...
And the official “golden rule” of summary judgment is…
...never forget to file a separate statement of facts! That's the lesson from Batarse v. Service Employees International Union Local 1000, in which an appellate court upheld dismissal of a discrimination and retaliation case because the employee forgot to include a...
Fired “Desperate Housewife” Loses Claim on Technicality
Nicollette Sheridan, who played the man-eating Edie Britt on Desperate Housewives, recently lost the wrongful termination case she filed after being let go from the hit television show. At issue was whether Sheridan was in fact "terminated," a necessary element to any...
Okay for lawyers to make employees’ DFEH complaints
In Rickards v. United Postal Service, Inc., the Second Appellate District resolved the lingering question whether attorneys can ethically file administrative discrimination complaints on their clients' behalf (they can). The issue arose because of a new...
Hoover v. American Income Life Insurance Company
Talk about burying the lede. In Hoover v. American Income Life Insurance Company, the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District discussed at length how employers that aggressively litigate cases in court cannot later compel the cases to arbitrate...