By Eileen Torrez Being misclassified as an independent contractor when you should be classified as an employee can have significant implications for workers. It can impact your job security, how much you pay in taxes, and whether you are protected by the law if something goes wrong. Learning more about the laws governing worker classification, …
By Dan Gildor and Alex Li In 2021, a high-profile case involving Farmers Group, Inc. and Farmers Insurance Exchange resulted in an award of $155 million in compensatory and punitive damages to Andrew Rudniki, former Senior Vice President of Claims Litigation and 37-year employee of Farmers. While this jury-ordered award, one of the largest of …
By Xinying Valerian On May 9, 2023, the California Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Adolph v. Uber Technologies on the question of “whether an aggrieved employee who has been compelled to arbitrate claims under the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) that are ‘premised on Labor Code violations actually sustained by’ the aggrieved employee [citations …
By Dan Gildor May 1, 2023 As attorneys who represent employees in California, we often encounter clients who are not aware of their rights as employees. But while knowing one’s rights are important, so is knowing how the rights are enforced. One enforcement mechanism that is important for all employees to know about is the …
California’s Private Attorney General Act (PAGA) for the Uninitiated Read More »
Trevor Bryne1 Over the past few decades, it has become increasingly common for American corporations to require workers and consumers to sign arbitration agreements. Through these agreements, workers and consumers waive their right to pursue a lawsuit in court if they are harmed by the corporation’s misconduct. Instead, they must submit to a process called …
By Trevor Byrne1 A class action lawsuit is a case brought by one or more individuals on behalf of a larger group of people who have suffered similar injuries caused by the same unlawful conduct. The resolution of the case—either by trial or by settlement—applies to each member of the class. Class actions can be …
By Alex Li Dan Gildor, Valerian Law’s new Senior Counsel, has lived many professional lives: as an aspiring astrophysicist at MIT, a programmer at start-ups during Silicon Valley’s dot-com boom, an environmental litigator enforcing the Clean Water Act, a lawyer for the Department of Industrial Relations, and a plaintiff’s-side employment lawyer for renowned class-action law …
Affirmative Action Up for Debate at the Supreme Court As we wrote about in our previous blog post on affirmative action, two ongoing Supreme Court cases on affirmative action in college admissions are predicted to have wider impacts that go beyond the realm of education, affecting how employers are able to seek out and hire …
By Eileen Torrez, November 30th, 2022 Three important federal laws form the basis for protecting U.S. employees from discrimination in the workplace: the Equal Pay Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We’ve written about the EPA here and the ADA here. This article focuses on …
Affirmative Action Part 1 of 2 | Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause Read More »
“I am a Human Resource generalist at a mid-sized private company. I told my department manager that we should not discourage employees from talking about pay, because that could be illegal. I learned this at a training hosted by our outside employment law firm about how HR should be handling compensation questions. My manager replied …
You Could be a Whistleblower Even If You Don’t Know It Read More »