Labor and Employment Law

Successfully defended a music industry business from a disability discrimination complaint. Client’s manager fired employee who claimed to have been injured at work. Manager expressly stated in a written letter to employee that the termination was based on the employee’s work place disability. The employee sued our client based on a disability discrimination claim. Extensive discovery and follow-up investigation produced evidence that the worker had been injured outside of the work place, and had staged a false injury incident at work in order to seek workers’ compensation benefits. Our firm prevailed in the legal action.

A terminated employee brought an action against a company, alleging violations of whistleblower statutes. Our firm developed evidence that the employee’s complaint was false and fraudulent, and the company was justified in terminating employee for making false allegations. During the course of the lawsuit, our firm also developed evidence that the plaintiff had routinely disclosed confidential information to unauthorized persons, creating a successful after-acquired evidence defense.

Successfully defended an unemployment claim and a sexual harassment and discrimination claim brought by an employee whose job was eliminated in a company restructuring event. The employee possessed substantial evidence of demeaning and discriminatory sexual preference comments texted about him among supervisors. Our firm was able to demonstrate that his termination was, however, entirely unrelated to the work place bias.
Enabled corporate client to invoke trade secret protections against departing employee who had wiped clean all information from his company computer and the company phone, and maintained the only existing copy of proprietary materials. Our firm obtained an agreement from the new employer to: (1) return all of the proprietary information, (2) ensure against any duplication of the proprietary materials, and (3) ensure that former employee would not approach client customers for a one-year period.

A client hired a new manager from a competitor company. The new manager had signed a non-solicitation clause at his former employment. This clause covered the non-solicitation of both customers and employees of the former employer. The new manager, a member of the client’s management team, violated this agreement by soliciting and hiring several of the former employer’s employees. Former employer sued manager and client alleging they had conspired to illegally solicit members of his work force. At trial, our firm defeated the former employer’s claims, persuading the court that such a contractual anti-solicitation provision violated both California law and public policy, and could not be enforced.

Former employee alleged a right to unemployment benefits and damages, asserting that he had been injured at work and terminated because of the work place injury. Our firm developed evidence that this former employee: (1) had been fully compensated for the same work injury at a prior time, (2) had not worked for the client for years after the actual injury occurred, and (3) had fabricated evidence in an effort to establish later injury and termination dates.

Obtained a million dollar settlement for client employee against former employer based on claims for failure to pay earned wages, unlawful business practices, conversion and fraud. Our firm developed evidence that the employee’s former employer had wrongfully labeled employee’s commissions as a “bonus” to withhold payment, and further, had wrongfully undervalued and fraudulently concealed the true value of employee’s ownership interest in the company, to deprive the employee of the full value. Successfully defended employee against the former employer’s cross-claims for misappropriation of trade secrets, fraud and negligent misrepresentation.