Until a recent court opinion, Dutra vs. Mercy Medical Center, 209 Cal. App 4th 750(9/26/12), it was common for employee-attorneys to sue for termination in violation of public policy based on Labor Code 132a. This provision prohibits discharging an employee for filing a workman's compensation claim. Now, it app...

Stephen Danz & John C. Fowler[1] Since this blog was published last February, we've had a few California cases which have continued the liberalization of ratios between compensatory damages and punitive damages. It appears the old rules of 1:10 and 1:4 are not necessarily sacrosanct. Where a California j...

Our law firm represents employees who claim discrimination based on age, sex, race, religion, or are whistle blowers reporting state or federal financial fraud. In many of the initial client interviews, we hear evidence of collateral wrongs such as invasion of privacy. This can be particularly true when the Cal...

If you had asked us 20 years ago which federal false claims cases generate the most publicity and income for the federal government, it would have been aerospace, with health care a distant second. Today, our practice (and the experience of the US Department of Justice) indicates a profound reversal, with healt...

In most California wrongful termination and discrimination cases, we search for legal and legitimate reasons to keep your case in state court. The reasons for that are numerous but generally state court judges are less inclined to dismiss the case on summary judgement than federal courts and juries can find for...

Union membership has declined to 11.3% of the US workforce, down about 50% from 30 years ago. Public employees continue to remain unionized. In California, where we practice employment discrimination and wrongful termination law, approximately 30% of the public workforce is unionized. However, Latino union me...

If you work in a company that provides co-worker salary information to you (which means your salary is also shared with your co workers), then thank the start-up and high tech industries of Silicon Valley for this new development. A leading pioneer in open salary data, SumAll, is a company whose core business i...