Labor & Employment Law Blog

What kinds of provisions in arbitration agreements will cause the courts to invalidate them?  The Court of Appeal in the recent case of Baxter v. Genworth North America Corporation analyzed and rejected several of them, in upholding the denial of a motion to compel arbitration of an employee’s wrongful termination and discrimination claims.  Baxter v. Genworth North America (October 26, 2017 ...

The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that an appellate court must review a district court’s decision whether to enforce a subpoena issued by the EEOC under an abuse of discretion standard rather than de novo review which provided no deference to the district court’s decision.  McLane Co. v. the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 137 S. Ct. 1159 (2017).

Facts and Procedural Background

In ...

On January 21, 2015, the California Court of Appeal held that the City of Santa Monica (the “City”) did not fail to reasonably accommodate an employee, Tony Nealy, where Nealy was unable to perform the essential functions of the job and there were no alternate positions for which Nealy was qualified.  Nealy v. City of Santa Monica, (California Ct App 02/13/2015).  The court also found that the City did not have ...

In Jesus Leyva v. Medline Industries, Inc., plaintiff that alleged he and other purported class members were not paid for all hours worked because the employer rounded employee’s start times in 29 minute increments such that an employee clocking in at 7:31 a.m., would be paid only from 8:00 a.m., onward; that the employer excluded non-discretionary bonuses from the calculation of employees’ overtime rates and thereby improperly depressing the employees’ overtime wages; that the employer willfully failed to pay to employees at the time of termination all wages due and owing and is therefore subject to “waiting time” penalties; and that the wage statements the employer issued to the employees did not accurately state all hours worked and all applicable rates of pay and is therefore subject to wage statement penalties.

On February 27, 2013, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) published interim final regulations regarding employee whistleblowing complaints under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA” a.k.a. the healthcare reform act). The regulations allow employees to file complaints with the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (“OSHA”) against their employers (and health ...

In Sanchez v. Swissport, Inc., the California Court of Appeal addressed for the first time the following question: Can an employee who exhausted all of her available leave under the California Pregnancy Disability Leave Law (“PDLL”) who was terminated when she was unable to return to work after exhausting all available PDLL leave state a claim for alleged sex discrimination or disability ...

In perhaps the first case to employ jury instructions based on the California Supreme Court’s recent holding in Harris v. City of Santa Monica that a plaintiff alleging discrimination in violation of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”) must prove that discrimination was a “substantial factor” motiving the challenged action of the employer and not just a factor, in Rodriguez ...

On August 31, 2012, AALRR attorneys Irma Rodriguez Moisa and Sharon J. Ormond obtained a unanimous jury defense verdict in favor of The Regents of the University of California after a 14-day jury trial.  The Plaintiff, James Friedman, was laid off from his position at the University of California at Los Angeles in April 2010 after a reorganization of his unit resulted in his position being eliminated.  He ...

Many employers require employees to acknowledge in writing the employee’s receipt of a notice or memorandum of discipline when workplace discipline is imposed. In Paratransit, Inc. v. Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, the California Court of Appeal held: (1) it is lawful for an employer to require an employee to sign such an acknowledgement, (2) an employee’s refusal to sign such an acknowledgement form when lawfully presented to the employee is “misconduct” as that term is defined in Unemployment Insurance Code section 1256, and (3) such “misconduct” is grounds for denying unemployment insurance benefits to an employee who is terminated for refusing to sign a discipline acknowledgement form lawfully presented to him or to her.