When an employee leaves for a competitor and takes confidential company files, the employer’s immediate reaction is often predictable: “They stole our trade secrets. We have a case.” Maybe. But a recent Northern District of California case involving electric-aircraft competitors Joby Aero and Archer Aviation illustrates why these cases can be much more complicated.
In Joby Aero, Inc. v. Archer
Your employer sends you to Texas for a training course. The company pays for your airfare, hotel, meals, and other travel expenses. The training ends, and you fly back to California. Does your employer have to pay you for the hours you spend traveling home? And if the trip takes long enough, could you also be entitled to overtime? For
When your doctor takes you off work or extends your medical leave under FMLA or CFRA, getting the note is only part of the job. Make sure it actually reaches the person responsible for handling your leave at your workplace. “My doctor’s office said they would send it” is not the same as “My employer confirmed receiving it.” That difference
You leave a steady job, move your family, and sign a new lease because an employer describes an opportunity worth relocating for. Months later, the company eliminates your position, or you discover that the job was never what you were told it would be. Does signing an at-will offer letter mean you have no case against that employer? Not necessarily.
A recently published California Court of Appeal decision, Morales v. Superior Court, provides an excellent example of why the precise wording of an arbitration agreement matters. A relatively small difference in contractual language ultimately determined whether an employee’s discrimination and wrongful termination claims would be decided in private arbitration or in court. For employees with potentially significant discrimination, retaliation, or
Employees returning to work after an injury sometimes encounter an unexpected problem: their employer decides that a medical restriction means they can no longer perform their job.
But a medical report does not necessarily give an employer a free pass to terminate an employee. A federal court’s decision in Narayan v. Compass Group USA, Inc. provides a useful example. The
One of the fundamental requirements of a disability discrimination claim is that the employer knew, or reasonably should have known, that the employee had a disability. For obvious reasons, an employer cannot be held liable for discriminating on the basis of a disability it did not know existed.
An employer “knows an employee has a disability” when (1) “the employee
In most retaliation cases, the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) applies the framework established in Novato Unified School District (1982) PERB Decision No. 210 (Novato USD).
Under the Novato USD framework, the charging party must first establish a prima facie case by proving four elements: (1) The employee engaged in an activity protected by a labor relations statute enforced
In almost every California employment case, the employee and the employer have very different explanations for what happened. An employee may believe that he was fired for discriminatory or retaliatory reasons. The employer will claim that the same employee was fired for performance issues, poor attendance, misconduct, or a combination of the above reasons. Whether those reasons are true is
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