EMPLOYEE WRONGFUL TERMINATION LAWYERS

Employment situations in which the employee has been unjustly fired compose a large percent of the lawsuits an employee lawyer has. However, true employee lawyers like our firm who only represent employees and only represent employees on a contingency are likely to work on cases involving:

• Wrongful termination - Which could involve whistleblowing, the refusal to act illegally, or employment termination due to a protected characteristic, such as age or pregnancy, which results in a violation of employment discrimination laws.
  
  
• Job Discrimination - for Age, Disability, FMLA, National Origin, Race, Pregnancy, and Sex
  
  
• Unpaid Wages - Wages owed for Meal Breaks, Minimum Wage, On-Call Work, Overtime, Prevailing Wage, Rest Breaks
  
  
• Sexual Harassment - sometimes in the form of verbal, physical, or electronic messages or Job Termination
  
  

Our firm has recently achieved the following results in Wrongful Termination Cases:

$495,000 for 5 employees who quit or were fired due to sex and age

$250,000 for an employee who complained she was entitled to overtime and other pa

$225,000 for an employee who quit due to sexual harassment of customers

$200,000 for an employee who quit due to sexual harassment

$195,000 for a whistleblower on an oil field

$150,000 for an employee who was fired while on FMLA leave

LAWYERS FOR EMPLOYEES

An employee lawyer is there to help workers in legal actions against their employers for wrongful termination, job discrimination resulting in a job loss, sexual harassment, Family Medical Leaves resulting in the loss of a job, unpaid wages, breach of employment contracts, and workers compensation. Attorneys for employees represent employees on a contingency which means they are not paid any legal fees, nor are they reimbursed for out-of-pocket case costs, such the court filing fee or deposition transcripts, until the employer pays money to settle the lawsuit, or an arbitration award or court verdict against the employer exists. Law firms that want up-front fees or costs for employee representation are not the right lawyers for employees. Employee lawyers work on a contingency. Because they are not billing for their time the employee gets a tremendous bargain. The employee attorney’s fee is deferred for months or years, without interest. When the employee lawyer divides the total contingency fee received by the number of hours the employee’s lawyer worked on the case the employee attorney does not end up earning anywhere near the hourly rate of a lawyer who bills by the hour. An employee could never hire a lawyer for the actual hour rate the employee lawyer ends up earning on a contingency.

Employee lawyers are focused on winning, or they will not be paid and the costs they advanced will not be reimbursed. Lawyers charging by the hour are usually limited on how much legal research their client wants to be charged. However, employee lawyers working on a contingency do not have their efforts limited by a client who does not want to pay for the time it takes to win.

Employee attorneys are courthouse and binding arbitration lawyers. They are not available for general consultations about ongoing issues at work that do not result in employment terminations. That type of legal advice an employee will have to pay a different kind of lawyer for. Employee lawyers are only concerned with matters they can sue for in court such as an unlawful job termination resulting in a large amount of wages due, or serious harassment on the basis of a protected characteristic such as sex, race, or pregnancy How to deal with coworkers an employee does not get along with is a human resource, or psychological issue opposed to a legal issue for an employee lawyer. There must be a job termination, serious harassment on the basis of something like pregnancy, race or sex, a work injury, or a large amount of wages owed individually or for a class of employees in a class action. Employee attorneys are there to help with employee rights that can be sued upon. They cannot give free legal advice on employment problems for which there is not a legal remedy.

Employee attorneys can obtain monetary compensation from an employer who violated a law. Employee lawyers can sue for emotional injury. Depending on the legal theories at issue, punitive damages and other penalties may be legally obtainable. Presuming the case involves wages not paid many separate California Labor Code violations may be at stake. Employment lawyers probably cannot force an employer to give an employee their job back. Employee lawyers cannot give tons of free legal advice to an employee thinks they may be fired, but have not yet been fired. Real employee lawyers are used to providing legal advice only after they have spent considerable time reviewing the employer’s side of the dispute which includes documents, interrogatory answers, and probably depositions of the persons involved in the wrongful employment situation.

Potential clients need to be realistic going into a legal dispute against their employers. While many are resolved for monetary compensation settle without the client having to see the courtroom, it not realistic to believe an employment lawsuit will be resolved without the case being filed, or the employee attorney conducting adequate discovery once the case is filed. Adequate pre-trial discovery involves obtaining documents and interrogatories which have to be answered by the employer. It also involves taking depositions of the supervisors, managers, and witnesses involved in the employment dispute. It is difficult for either the employer or the employee attorney to adequately evaluate a case and recommend the appropriate level of payout without evaluating the credibility l evel and plausibility of each side’s argument.

The employee attorney will write interrogatory questions and document requests without the client present. The employee attorney can take the necessary depositions without the client present. When employee clients are able to attend depositions of witnesses their lawyer must depose, the employee can see how their case is unfolding. Although an experienced employee attorney will think of hundreds of questions the employee might never think of, employees who attend depositions their own lawyers take often come up with a few very important questions. If the employee client is present at the deposition their lawyer takes the company witness, or former employee witness may be less likely to lie in front of the employee client who was present when the events occurred.

EMPLOYEE LAW LAWYERS

Employment laws come from court decisions and laws enacted by the legislature. Laws enacted by the legislature are called statutes. Laws that are created through court decisions are called common law. Due to the tremendous number of laws pertaining to employment it is important to contact an experienced employee attorney if you believe something wrongful happened to you your place of employment. Employment laws change on a constant basis. On a daily basis new California cases come out, and there are also new Federal decisions. New statutes are also enacted at least on a yearly basis. Recently, a few Federal Executive Orders were rescinded. However, we generally use state law so you should not worry about any negative trends or limitations under Federal law. In the field of employee law, Federal laws are intended to be the most basic form of employee protection. California state laws are intended to provide greater protection to employees’ rights.

The best thing a potential client can do is to call the employee law attorney on the telephone. Emails do not answer all of the questions. An interactive dialogue between the employee lawyer and the potential client is essential. Please allow the employee lawyer to ask the questions they think are appropriate. The law is formulaic. One does not get to step two if step one is not done, and step three which might be your right to sue under a certain legal theory cannot exist if step one is missing. Our experienced employee attorneys have handled hundreds of employment lawsuits. The head of our law firm has himself handled more than 1,665 separate employee binding arbitration and court cases many of which involve multiple employees and classes of employees. We know the right questions to ask and will direct the call in a meaningful manner in order to avoid wasting your time, prolonging the telephone interview, or becoming inundated in facts that do not matter and confuse the situation.

Be honest when speaking to the employee attorney. Our employee attorneys will see past mistruths, and so will the lawyer who represents the employer. Try to avoid unnecessary background noise. A call to an employee attorney is not something you want to make while driving, or in a room full of noisy people. We have stopped what we were doing to speak to you. Please give us the same courtesy. Do not have others on the telephone when you call our office. You will hear the good, bad, and ugly from a competent employee attorney. The things the employee lawyer will tell you, and what you tell the employee attorney is confidential and subject to the attorney-client privilege. If you have other people on the call the attorney-client-privilege will be destroyed. You will also make your friend or family member a witness to the bad and ugly. It is never in your interest to have a witness capable of being subpoenaed by the other side. The non-client will have to divulge the negative things you and the attorney said during your initial communication. Attorney-client-privilege also applies when speaking to members of the attorney’s staff. When you make your initial contact with the office of the employee lawyer you need to be the only person on the telephone.

Some of our recent Riverside County employee lawsuits results include:

$800,000 for controlled standby for persons forced to answer on-call, calls
$400,000 following a won binding arbitration for 5 phlebotomists and a small PAGA group who were forced to work off-the-clock
$260,000 for a supermarket employee who was sexual harassed but not fired
$200,000 for FMLA violations and potential paystub errors

*EVERY CASE IS BASED UPON ITS OWN FACTS. OUR PREVIOUS RESULTS ARE NOT A GUARANTEE OR PREDICTION OF FUTURE RESULTS OR A PARTICULAR CASE

TO SPEAK TO AN EXPERIENCED EMPLOYEE LAW LAWYER,
CALL 951-367-1000 .