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employment law verdictsRemember that prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome in any case.
Discrimination and Retaliation A 27-year employee of the City of Emeryville turned to Boxer & Gerson’s employment practice group after she was terminated from her job following a psychiatrist’s report that she was "unfit for duty." The employee, who was chief union steward at the time of her termination, had challenged racial discrimination, harassment, and unfair treatment by City management throughout her career. Attorneys Darci Burrell and Leslie Levy charted new legal territory in this case by bringing a claim against the psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen Raffle, for "aiding and abetting" the City in retaliating against their client for her years of anti-discrimination advocacy on behalf of herself and others. On the eve of the jury trial, Emeryville agreed to pay an estimated $3.6 million in damages and attorneys fees to settle the case. The settlement was a vindication for the employee and restored her good name. Boxer & Gerson attorneys Jean Hyams and Darci Burrell tried a case on behalf of a woman who suffered from retaliation after she complained repeatedly about sexual and racial harassment on the graveyard shift at Caltrans’ Oakland Transportation Management Center. Members of the jury wept when they rendered a unanimous verdict finding Caltrans liable for maintaining a sexually and racially hostile work environment and subjecting the plaintiff to retaliation. By obtaining a jury verdict and attorneys’ fee award in excess of $1 million, the Boxer & Gerson employment team vindicated the rights of the Caltrans employee and delivered a clear message to employers about the cost of maintaining a work environment in which sexually and racially inappropriate conduct is permitted to thrive. A confidential resolution resulted from a tenure discrimination case brought on behalf of a university professor alleging gender and disability discrimination. Family and Medical Leave Retaliation A woman who missed work because of her serious health condition was fired by her employer under its "no fault" absence policy. After Boxer & Gerson filed suit on her behalf and worked the case up for trial, the employer ended up footing the bill for the plaintiff’s attorneys fees and paying the plaintiff money damages to avoid a jury trial. In a case arbitrated pursuant to a mandatory employment arbitration agreement, Boxer & Gerson attorneys secured a positive outcome for a woman who was terminated from her job after taking time off as medical leave. Since the termination took place as part of a major corporate reorganization and the layoff of hundreds of people, the firm’s attorneys had to prove that she was singled out and fired for unlawful reasons. Reasonable Accommodation When the Pleasanton Unified School District refused to provide reasonable accommodations for a veteran school teacher and falsely claimed that the teacher’s disabilities prevented her from performing her job, Boxer & Gerson filed suit. In the end, the school district agreed to a settlement valued at over $600,000 to redress the wrong it inflected on the teacher. On the eve of trial, the Oakland Unified School District agreed to pay $200,000 to settle the lawsuit filed by Boxer & Gerson on behalf of a primary school teacher who was injured because the District failed to provide reasonable accommodations for her disabilities. Sexual Harassment Boxer & Gerson attorneys represented a corporate sales manager in her sexual harassment claims against her employer, 24 Hour Fitness. The company required their employees to sign away the right to a trial by jury as a condition of their employment, so the claims could only be brought through private arbitration. The result, a $2.4 million award, including $1.2 million in punitive damages was one of the largest awards on record for a single plaintiff arbitration. After the arbitration, the employer tried to seal the record to keep Boxer & Gerson’s client from publicizing the outcome of her case. Jean Hyams and Leslie F. Levy fought a post-arbitration legal battle for the right to make the company’s misdeeds public so that other employers would learn the costly consequences of sexual harassment in the workplace. Wage and Hour Violations For more than a decade, a major waste disposal corporation paid eleven of its employees wages as much as $20/hour less than the prevailing wage agreed upon with the local government. Boxer & Gerson uncovered the full story of the company’s cheating, including a quote from a vice-president who said "what [the workers] don’t know won’t hurt them", and won a settlement that included a sizeable compensation for the workers’ years of lost wages. Whistleblower Retaliation A swim coach reported that one of her assistant coaches was engaging in sexually inappropriate behavior with minors on the swim team. Her employer refused to do anything to correct the situation and she resigned from her job rather than sit by and watch the young team members be harmed. Boxer & Gerson attorneys Leslie Levy and Jean Hyams won the jury trial, resulting in an award of over $100,000 for the swim coach. Boxer & Gerson brought suit for wrongful termination in violation of public policy on behalf of a police officer who was terminated after he complained to his superiors that he had been unlawfully pressured to falsify a police. By taking depositions of command officers up the chain of command to the level of chief of police, attorney Jean Hyams gathered evidence to show that her client’s complaints were one of the factors motivating the decision to terminate him. Just days before a jury trial was set to begin, the police department agreed to a $475,000 settlement.  |
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