One of the potentially tricky issues an employer can face involves dealing with an employee who is an alcoholic, or otherwise uses drugs or alcohol. Under the Fair Employment and Housing Act, alcoholism is a recognized disability, so taking an adverse employment action based solely on the employee’s alcoholism is problematic.…
An insurer emerged victorious in a bad faith lawsuit arising from a fatal auto accident in which the insurer’s insured, a teen driver, caused an accident that killed his passenger. The California Court of Appeal decided that it was not bad faith for the insurer not to pay for a settlement…
A former employee at a financial firm was entitled to damages and attorneys’ fees for pregnancy discrimination, according to a Los Angeles County trial court. The California Court of Appeal recently upheld that decision in the woman’s Fair Employment and Housing Act case, since the employer failed to prove that it…
Auto accident cases often involve serious injuries that require extensive (and expensive) medical care to treat. When the accident victim doesn’t have health insurance, this can become complicated. In an important new case on the issue of the issue of assessing economic damages (such as past medical expenses) in an…
A gas company dispatcher, who sent her former supervisor hundreds of text messages, phone calls and emails, even after receiving explicit instructions to stop from the former supervisor and her current supervisor, was not able to support a claim of retaliation in violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act…
A teacher who was the victim of an ongoing pattern of harassment at the hands of students at the school where she taught received a mixed result in her legal action against the school and the Catholic archdiocese that ran it. The US District Court for the Northern District of…
If you are injured in an auto accident, the court case that may follow could involve many different parties, and how that case unfolds may depend on which parties agree to settle. In one recent case, an taxi cab passenger sued both her cab company and another driver after she…
A spa employee managed to persuade a jury both that she was on the receiving end of sexual harassment while performing her job and that her employer failed to take the necessary steps required to prevent harassment or discrimination from occurring. However, in spite of all this, the employee ultimately…
If you’ve been injured in an accident, chances are the last thing you want to do is go to trial on issues that the other side has no reasonable ground for contesting. Contesting issues without a reasonable belief of victory can be costly to the side who does this, though.…
In July of this year, Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 987 into law. That legislation provided an important benefit to employees seeking religious or disability-related accommodations in the workplace. Under the new law, the act of requesting a disability or religious accommodation is now a protected activity under the Fair…