Firm News

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...

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...

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...

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...

...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...

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...

           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...

          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...

         That's the lesson from Cullen v. Corwin, an appellate court case that denied attorneys' fees to a prevailing party that stubbornly refused to mediate early in its case.  The case involved the sale of an allegedly-defective vacation home.  The buyers sued but...