Labor & Employment

Newspaper home delivery carriers were properly found to be employees, covered by Labor Code wage, hour, and expense reimbursement provisions, not independent contractors.  Read More

Bank’s home loan underwriter was not an exempt “administrative” employee for purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act and hence was entitled to overtime compensation.   Read More

District court erred in dismissing plaintiff’s employment discrimination suit even though it had become moot, since plaintiff could still receive nominal damages and have his dignity interest vindicated even though he no longer worked for employer.  Read More

Employee’s introduction of evidence of discriminatory remarks by an upper-level supervisor should have enabled him to survive summary judgment on his claim for discriminatory termination due to his sexual orientation, even though employer also introduced evidence of a non-pretextual non-discriminatory motive as well; mixed motives do not absolve the employer.  Read More

An employee may sue his employer's outside counsel for conspiring with Immigration & Customs Enforcement to have him deported as an unregistered alien in retaliation for his having filed suit against the employer alleging a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.  Read More

The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act applies to all state and local government agencies without regard to the number of workers they employ, though it applies to private employers only if they have 20 or more workers.  Read More

An EEOC administrative subpoena for names, addresses and phone numbers of co-workers should have been enforced as the information was relevant to the charge the EEOC was investigating, allowing the EEOC to contact co-workers to weigh whether the employer’s test was discriminatory.  Read More

Arbitration clause in employee’s contract with staffing agency could be enforced by the employer to whom the staffing agency assigned him, because plaintiff’s claims arose out of his employment contract and were intimately intertwined with it, thus estopping him from asserting the employer was not a party to the agreement.  Read More

The Labor Code requirement that an employer give an employee a day of rest after six days of work applies on a calendar week basis, not a rolling basis, and applies during any week in which the employee works more than six hours in any one day.  Read More

In defending a claim that employees’ pay disparity violates the Equal Pay Act, an employer may justify the disparities by showing that it results from differences between the pay the compared employees earned in prior jobs, so long as the reliance on prior wages effectuates some business policy of the employer and the employer uses evidence of prior wages reasonably. Read More

Plaintiff-employee who quit her job during a psychotic episode induced by prescription drugs could not state a claim for disability discrimination when her former employer denied her later request for reinstatement; the former employer owed no duty to rehire her once the former employment relationship ceased.  Read More

Employer was not entitled to summary judgment on discrimination claim based on the Immigration Control and Reform Act, since that act requires proof of immigration status only for new hires, not employees reinstated after a disciplinary suspension nor employees hired before 1986.  Read More

The trial court’s finding that plaintiffs were exempt administrative employees, not entitled to overtime pay, was supported by substantial, properly admitted evidence showing plaintiffs spent more than 50% of their work time on administrative tasks.  Read More

Employer improperly calculated overtime pay in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act when it paid employees for overtime at a rate less than 150% of their usual non-overtime pay.  Read More

Health care workers may waive their otherwise mandatory second meal break during shifts of over eight hours. Read More

An arbitration clause in a high executive’s employment contract was enforceable after severance of its single unconscionable provision exempting from arbitration any claim for breach by the employee of the employer’s confidentiality agreement.  Read More

Police officer recruits who sustained temporary injuries while training at the Police Academy were unable to prove claims for disability discrimination, but they nevertheless were entitled to judgment on their claim that the City had failed to accommodate their disabilities when it eliminated a program under which injured recruits were assigned to light administrative duties while they recovered.  Read More

A charter school is not exempt from liability for penalties for failing to pay workers the amounts due when their employment is terminated.  Read More

In order to reach a jury, plaintiff did not need to introduce evidence that unwelcome sexual advances from plaintiff’s supervisor are both severe and pervasive; since the statute is disjunctive, she only needed to proffer evidence of one of these aspects.  Read More

District court properly denied defendant employer’s motion to compel arbitration of plaintiff workers’ wage and hour claims, since collective bargaining agreement’s arbitration clause covered only contract-related claims, not statutory claims.  Read More