Asthma and sensitivity to tobacco smoke and other pollutants are conditions that have been recognized by courts as a protected disability at workplace, entitling the workers suffering from those conditions to a reasonable accommodation. In County of Fresno v. Fair Employment & Housing Commission (1991), the employer (the county) argued…
One of the hallmarks and great advantages of California disability laws, which encompasses employers’ obligation to engage in interactive process to find reasonable accommodations to qualifying employees with a disability or a medical condition, is its flexibility. Generally, the employer must consider various solutions to accommodating an employee and be…
One of the common mistakes claimants make is coming to the mediation with a set, firm “floor” settlement figure in their mind. This approach has seriously downside. First and foremost, mediation is a process that requires at least some compromise from both parties. Statistically, most cases that go to mediation…
Having been regularly representing registered nurses, nursing assistants and medical assistants who work for major hospitals and other healthcare facilities in California, including such groups as Kaiser, Stanford Hospitals, and Sutter Health, I see the same patter of work related injuries over and over. A nurse or an assistant is…
Under CFRA (California Family Rights Act), an employer is generally required to grant an eligible employee’s request to take up to a total of 12 workweeks in any 12-month period for family care and medical leave. CFRA or FMLA leave may be taken because of an employee’s own serious health…
The recently published case, DFEH v Lyddan Law Group, decided by the agency that reviewing DFEH decision, reaffirms that fact that an employee is unlikely to prevail on a racial discrimination/harassment claim when his/her boss makes racial jokes, off-color comments with regard to different races in an apparent desire to…
Like any other kind of employment discrimination, proving age discrimination at workplace is anything but easy. Some employees believe that being terminated at the age of over 40 means they have a wrongful termination claim based on age discrimination. While the termination itself if one factor that may point at…
The protections afforded to employee under the Federal and State disability laws are quite expansive and go far beyond protecting just those employee who have a “disability” the way an ordinary person would understand the term, such as being handicapped, or having suffered from a major traumatic injury. The US…
In Doe v Lincoln Unified School District, the Third District extensively discusses the rights of California certificated employees within California Education Section 44942, which provides a summary procedure for suspending or transferring to other duties a certificated school employee where there is reasonable cause to believe the employee “is suffering…
Few wrongful termination, harassment, and discrimination cases are “clear cut.” No matter how strong the evidence of unlawful conduct by the employer is in the hands of the aggrieved employee, the employer always has its own side to the story, which usually says “We did nothing wrong, and the plaintiff…