Law Office of Arkady Itkin / Tel. 916-720-0100 / e-mail: arkady@arkadylaw.com
The Sixth District Court of Appeal recently explained in Serri v. Santa Clara University (2014), that unlawful harassment consists of conduct which is not necessary to one’s job performance and is “presumably engaged in for personal gratification, because of meanness or bigotry, or for other personal motives (citing Reno v. Baird (1998)) and “is distinguishable Read More …
Many compelling disability discrimination cases involve a situation where the employee has to call in sick due to his known serious medical condition or a disability, but the employer nevertheless penalizes that employee for those absences by writing that employee up or giving him a “point” for each absence, if there is a points systems Read More …
A common question among employees is whether your employer can and has a legal right to assign to you those job duties which are not part of your formal job description that you received upon hiring or at any time after you have been hired. The answer is usually (but not always) yes. If you Read More …
CFRA rights are intended to give employees an opportunity to take leave from work for certain personal or family medical reasons without jeopardizing their job security. Nelson v United Technologies (1999). Generally, CFRA makes it illegal for an employer of fifty or more employees to refuse to grant a request by an employee to take Read More …
One of the more common reasons an employee (especially a female employee) would be forced to resign from her employment is taking care of her children. Generally, the necessity for caring for one’s children constitutes “good cause” for voluntarily leaving work, where the employee would be entitled to unemployment benefits (Precedent Decision P-B-256). The two Read More …
“Undue hardship” is one type of defense available to employers to justify why they didn’t / couldn’t accommodate a disabled employee, as may be required by ADA / FEHA. To use this defense, the employer has a burden of proving that specific accommodation would have imposed an undue hardship on their operations financially or otherwise. Read More …
I keep seeing how employees make the same easily avoidable mistakes when submitting discrimination or harassment complaints about a co-worker or a manager. If you are about to submit such a complaint to your management, makes sure that you avoid these common mistakes in order to maximize the chances of the employer actually helping you Read More …
One of the most common types of employment claims in hospitals and other healthcare facilities is retaliation against nurses for complaining about nurse-to-patient staffing ratios by nurses, doctors or other healthcare professionals. When these strict staffing ratio requirements are violated, this means that each nurse and/or each doctor is assigned with more patients that they Read More …
The FEHA (California Fair Employment and Housing Act) imposes on employers the duty to reasonably accommodate their employees’ physical disabilities. Under the FEHA, “reasonable accommodation” means a “modification or adjustment at the workplace that enables the employee to perform the essential functions of the job held or desired. Nadaf-Rahrov v Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. (2008). If Read More …
One of the common mistakes that employees make that’s rarely their fault is providing a very generic, insufficient medical note to the employer in support of their absence. This is the type of note that does not properly put the employer on notice of that employee’s disability or FMLA qualifying medical condition. As a result, Read More …