Costa Mesa

As a layperson, you may find it difficult to know when your employer’s conduct is discriminatory, harassing, retaliatory or otherwise a legal violation. Rather than take a chance on guessing wrong, you should immediately seek legal counsel. Call the seasoned and tenacious Costa Mesa employment lawyers of Calderone Law Firm about your lawsuit. We use insights gleaned over two decades to seek the best outcomes in our clients’ cases.

Discrimination occurs if the Costa Mesa company you work for takes an adverse employment action against you due to a trait that is protected under local, state, or federal law. State law often provides the greatest protection; the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) applies to protect against discrimination based on a broad range of traits when your employer has at least 5 employees. For example, if your employer demotes you because you transition to female when you were assigned male at birth, this is discrimination, and you may have a claim. Similarly, if you have multiple sclerosis and request an accommodation of more frequent brief rest breaks at work, and it would not present an undue hardship for your employer to provide this, but the employer fires you for asking for an accommodation at all, you may have a disability discrimination claim. Likewise, if your coworkers physically attack you for being Muslim, and your employer tells you to learn to laugh it off and takes no action to protect you, and the harassment escalates, you may have a religious discrimination claim.

Under California whistleblower protection laws, your boss is prevented from retaliating against you for reporting legal violations on the job. You will be protected from retaliation even if it turns out you were wrong about a legal violation if you reasonably believed what you reported was a violation. The company you work for cannot penalize you for reporting workplace safety violations to Cal/OSHA, for notifying the police about a crime committed at work, or for reporting a false claim to the government. Whistleblower retaliation can take many different forms including wrongful termination, along with demotion, unfair write-ups, failure to promote you, refusing you to undergo training needed for your job, or harassing you. It is wise to consult with an attorney that can advise you when you are thinking about blowing the whistle on your employer.

Your employer cannot retaliate against you for bringing a wage and hour lawsuit on the basis of minimum wage, overtime, meal and rest breaks, or other matters. Wage theft is more common than people think, and as damages, you may be able to collect unpaid amounts of minimum wage or overtime pay, along with interest and reasonable attorneys’ fees. If your employer didn’t simply make a mistake in good faith, you may be able to recover liquidated damages, too. Although wage theft is common, the amounts you would recover may be too small to litigate on your own. It might be worthwhile to join with your coworkers who are similarly situated to sue your employer in a wage and hour class action. These lawsuits can be challenging, and it’s imperative to seek counsel that has experience providing representation to classes of plaintiffs. One of the important steps in a class action is to file a motion for certification. In the motion, our attorneys would need to prove that the claims of you and your coworkers, or the class, meet the requirements of numerosity, adequacy, typicality, and commonality.

Often, it’s very stressful to go up against a company. In most cases, they have an experienced legal team on their side. It’s important to consult a seasoned Costa Mesa employment law attorney who can level the playing field whether your dispute involves discrimination, harassment, wage and hour violations or whistleblower retaliation. Our founder, Vincent Calderone, has more than 20 years of experience representing workers in litigation and can put that experience to work for you and your lawsuit. Please contact us online or call us at (424) 348-8290.