Orange County Employment Lawyers Blog

How to File an Orange County Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

October 22, 2022 | by Nassiri Law

Workplace sexual harassment is a serious problem plaguing employees in California and beyond. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reports that between 2018 and 2021, it received nearly 28,000 complaints alleging sexual harassment.

As our Orange County sexual harassment lawyers can explain, such conduct is against the law. Employees impacted by sexual harassment deserve to be compensated for the harm they’ve suffered. Filing a California sexual harassment lawsuit is the way to do it.

What Exactly is Sexual Harassment?

It’s not unusual for folks to glean a narrow view of what precisely is sexual harassment.

Many people think of it as the stereotypical quid pro quo type of situation. Basically, a boss demands sex from an employee and, if employee refuses, they’ll be fired. And that is sexual harassment, but not the only form of it.

Both California and U.S. law define sexual harassment as behavior that involves:

Unwanted sexual advances.
Unwelcome physical, visual, or verbal conduct of a sexual nature.
Offensive conduct that is directed at or based on someone because of their sex, gender, sexual orientation, or pregnancy.

Harassment can involve a supervisor, but sometimes it involves co-workers or even customers. The defining factor is if endurance of this conduct effectively becomes a condition of employment. If you complain to your boss and nothing is done to correct the situation – or worse, you are retaliated against for complaining – that’s when sexual harassment is legally actionable. Continue Reading ›

Orange County Workplace National Origin Discrimination Prompts EEOC Lawsuit

October 15, 2022 | by Nassiri Law

Allegations of Orange County workplace national origin discrimination at a California-based construction company has led to litigation by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

The federal lawsuit alleges that for at least the last three years, supervisors at the construction company subjected Latino workers to harassment based on their race and national origin. In some cases, the workers were threatened with sexual assault.

As our Orange county employment attorneys can explain, while racial discrimination and sexual harassment are pretty well understood, national origin discrimination is less so. It involves treating applicants for employment or employees unfavorably on the basis of their actual or perceived place of birth, country of origin, ancestry, native language, accent, or because they are perceived as looking or sounding “foreign.”

In this case, construction workers were reportedly subjected to ongoing harassment in which their co-workers and supervisors referred to them as “wetbacks” and mocked them for not speaking English, and told them to “go back to where you came from.” In the bathrooms, anti-Latino graffiti would cover the walls, including offensive imagery and abusive language.

The Latino workers were also allegedly sexually harassed by co-workers, referred to as derogatory slurs, regularly shown explicit pictures, and threatened with sexual assault. Continue Reading ›

Failure to Provide Reasonable Accommodations is a Form of California Disability Discrimination

October 10, 2022 | by Nassiri Law

Workplaces that fail to accommodate a worker’s injury or disability may be rightly sued for California employment discrimination.

As explained by the California Department of General Services’ Office of Human Resources, reasonable accommodation refers to logical adjustments made to a job and/or the work environment that enables a person who is disabled to perform the essential functions of that job. Reasonable accommodations don’t change the essential job functions or create jobs that don’t exist. But they are provided when accommodation is necessary to allow a person who is disabled to perform the essential job functions.

Employers have a responsibility to engage in a timely, good faith, interactive process to determine effective reasonable accommodations for employees who are disabled. When they do not, workers can take legal action against them by filing a California employment lawsuit.

That’s what happened in a recent case at a poultry farm in Merced County, Central California. Continue Reading ›

Several New California Employment Rules Signed Into Law

October 5, 2022 | by Nassiri Law

A number of new California employment laws are aimed at imposing greater employer responsibility to prevent workplace bias, including explicitly barring discrimination for off-the-clock use of cannabis and being more transparent when it comes to employee pay.

As a Los Angeles employment attorney, I’m here to assist and advise individuals who have been subject to workplace discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or wrongful termination. These new laws means there are higher compliance expectations for employers to ensure pay equity, reduce wage theft, and reduce retaliation.

Pay Transparency

California Wage & Hour Lawsuit Plaintiff Given Green Light for Damages Under Both UCL & Statutory Claims

September 30, 2022 | by Nassiri Law

In pursuing a California wage & hour lawsuit, there may be several local, state, and federal regulations and laws under which claims may be brought. It’s not uncommon for employer defendants to try to argue dismissal of as many of those claims as possible on whatever grounds they can. Holding them to full account for each violation requires hiring an Orange County employment lawyer with extensive knowledge of the law and precedent, as well as a lengthy track record of success in similar cases.

Recently, a California appellate case underscored how claims may be filed under overlapping laws, with legal remedies available under each.

The case, Ayala v. U.S. Xpress Enterprises, Inc., was a class action case filed by drivers for a transportation firm whose services included cross-country truckload shipping. The plaintiff drivers allege the business wasn’t in compliance with California wage and hour laws because it paid employees by the length of the trip, versus how much time it took to make each trip. The company focused more on the approximate distance of each delivery, versus the actual hours drivers worked.

California Workplace Seating Requirement Guidelines Outlined in Recent Appellate Case

September 23, 2022 | by Nassiri Law

A recent decision by a California appellate court offers insight into how companies can comply with workplace seating requirements, as mandated by state labor law. In Meda v. AutoZone, the California Court of Appeals, Second District, Division Three, ruled that while these cases are inevitably going to be fact-intensive with numerous factors at issue, there is a measure of commonsense employers should employ when deciding when they can reasonably and meaningfully provide workers with seating.

The case in question was filed under the California Private Attorney General’s Act (PAGA), which allows private citizens to step in the shoes of the state’s attorney general in order to pursue legal action for violation of state labor law.

According to court records, the defendant retailer, an auto shop store, did not offer cashiers and parts counter workers with adequate seating when (according to plaintiffs) they easily could have. California requires companies to offer workers their seats that are suitable when the nature of the work reasonably permits it.

In response, the defendant store argued that it did offer two raised chairs (adequate in height to use the counter at those work stations), and these seats were available to all workers – plaintiff included.

Plaintiff, however, argued that while the chairs were placed in those locations, workers were given to understand they were only available as an accommodation (for pregnancy, disability, etc.), and that at no time did the company tell other workers that they were free to use these seats.

The trial court sided with the employer, finding that simply providing these chairs was adequate enough to meet the state law requirement on seating. Continue Reading ›

Report: Private Employee Lawsuits May Be Key to AB5 Enforcement

September 20, 2022 | by Nassiri Law

When it comes to enforcement of California’s AB5, the labor law intended to crack down on employee misclassification, private litigation may play a big role – particularly in the trucking sector.

As our Los Angeles employee misclassification lawyers can explain, AB5 laid out very clear stipulations for who is an independent contractor versus who is an employee. This distinction matters because employees are entitled to a number of important benefits that independent contractors are not. These include things like minimum and overtime wages, meal and rest breaks, workers’ compensation coverage, and more.

For many years, employers have skirted their responsibilities to employees by improperly labeling them as “independent contractors” when in fact their duties and the degree of control exercised by the company more accurately denoted an employee-employer relationship. AB5 seeks to rectify this – but it’s not been without its controversies – particularly in the transportation sector. In previous legal challenges of the bill, the trucking industry had managed to avoid being lumped in with other companies where AB5 was concerned. However, that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling declining to hear an appeal on an appellate court ruling that paved the way for implementation of AB5 in the trucking sector.

FreightWaves reported recently on a TransForce webinar that examined a potential two-check system for trucking companies to be compliant with AB5: One that involves regulatory crackdowns directly from the California Division of Labor Enforcement Standards and the other that involves bottom-up enforcement in the form of private employment lawsuits filed under the state’s Private Attorney General Act. For those unfamiliar, this nearly 20-year-old statute gives employees the authority to sue their employers as a substitute for action by either a regulator or attorney general. In essence, private citizens are able to pursue the California employment law cases that neither the state’s attorney general nor regulators want to take up themselves. Continue Reading ›

Employer Missteps That Lead to Los Angeles Employment Lawsuits

September 15, 2022 | by Nassiri Law

In our work as longtime Los Angeles employment attorneys, we’ve become closely familiar with the types of business practices that land many employers in hot water when it comes to California employment law compliance. These include things like failure to implement easy/accurate timekeeping systems, not maintaining employment handbook and policies, failure to document everything, and brushing off the seriousness of employee complaints when they’re first made.

We represent employees and prospective employees when companies skirt labor laws and fail to respect workers’ civil rights on-the-job. Cases we commonly take on include claims of wage theft, employee misclassification, sexual harassment, discrimination (race, age, gender, religion, LGBTQ, nationality, ethnicity, disability, pregnancy, and other protected classes), wrongful termination and retaliation.

Employees who experience workplace discrimination rarely recognize the same red flags that our legal team does, so we’re highlighting a few of the more common issues here. Continue Reading ›

How Much Does it Cost to Hire a Los Angeles Employment Lawyer?

September 8, 2022 | by Nassiri Law

When considering whether to file a California employment lawsuit, one of the first questions raised is often, “How much does it cost to hire an employment lawyer?”

There are a lot of factors that go into the final answer to this question, but it’s important to understand that at least at the outset of the case, you pay nothing. As outlined by the California Bar Association, attorneys fees for employment litigation are arranged on a contingency fee basis.

As a Los Angeles employment lawyer can explain, a contingency fee arrangement stems from a contractual agreement wherein the client agrees to pay the attorney a percentage of the proceeds from the case – if any.

You may have heard the phrase, “You pay nothing unless we win.” That refers to a contingency fee arrangement. The “nothing” referred to there is with regard to attorney’s fees. Depending on the circumstances, plaintiffs may still be responsible for certain things like witness fees, court fees, payments for copies, and some other expenses, regardless of the case outcome, but attorney’s fees are where the bulk of a plaintiff’s costs would be in a civil case. Waiving those fees in the event the case is not won serves on two fronts: It prevents attorneys from taking up frivolous (unlikely to win) claims, and it evens the accessibility playing field when it comes to taking strong claims to court.

Think about it: If a former fast food employee filing a wage theft claim had to pay the same upfront legal fees that the corporate defendant is likely paying, they’d never get their foot past the front door of the courthouse. Contingency fee arrangements provide strong incentives for plaintiff attorneys to level with prospective clients about the veracity and value of their potential case. Such arrangements also allow those less economically advantaged to have the same opportunity to seek justice as anyone else. Continue Reading ›

Bill Promises California Employee Protections for Off-the-Clock Cannabis Use

September 2, 2022 | by Nassiri Law

Despite the 2016 legalization of recreational cannabis use in California, it continues to be a sticking point where employment law is concerned. An increasing number of employers are turning a blind eye to what workers indulge in outside working hours (if only because good help is increasingly hard to find). But now, workers may have the benefit of state law on their side – if AB 2188 is passed.

As our Los Angeles employment lawyers can explain, there is currently little in the way to protect employees from job policies that prohibit off-the-clock marijuana use. Of course, on-the-clock intoxication is always going to be a big no-no, but proving cannabis intoxication is usually tough, given the length of time marijuana stays in the system/shows up in chemical testing. It’s not like alcohol, which quickly cycles through the body – making a high level of it in blood, breath, or urine samples a strong indicator of recent use/intoxication. Workers employed by companies that require drug testing may find themselves out-of-a-job – even if they never used the substance at work.

AB 2188 would amend the California Fair Employment and Housing Act’s section on employment discrimination, making it an illegal employment practice to discriminate against an employee or respective employee based on their use of cannabis outside of the workplace premises and working hours. The bill would make violation of this provision grounds for a civil employment lawsuit, with remedies similar to that of any other California employment discrimination claim.

Although the bill would add a layer of protection for workers, it would also shield employers who wish to maintain a drug-free work environment. AB 2188 would not protect workers from adverse employment action if they possessed, were impaired by, or used cannabis on-the-job or at the employer’s premises. Workers would not be free to take their weed to work, use it onsite, or show up to work impaired. Continue Reading ›