California employment case index

A firm filed a wage-and-hour class action duplicating one it had already filed elsewhere, then opposed a stay with a brief — drafted by a contract attorney using generative AI — full of nonexistent citations and at least eight fabricated quotations. The First District affirms $6,000 in section 128.7 sanctions: counsel of record bear ultimate responsibility for what they sign, and the duty to verify authority cannot be delegated to any form of technology.

An employee with an undisclosed bipolar diagnosis was fired after two episodes of erratic, irrational behavior at work, then sued Target under FEHA. The Second District affirms summary judgment: employer knowledge is a prerequisite to FEHA disability liability, and it is imputed only when disability is the “only reasonable interpretation” of the conduct — not where intoxication, medication, or sleep deprivation could equally explain it.

A terminated COO forwarded her employer’s e-mails — some attorney-client privileged — to her personal account and handed them to her lawyers for her wrongful-termination and harassment cross-claims. The Fourth District holds the State Fund rule on handling privileged materials applies even to such intentional, unauthorized disclosures, and reverses the denial of the employer’s motion to disqualify counsel.

Intuitive Surgical defended a harassment suit by pointing to the adequacy of its attorney-led investigation, then tried to withhold the investigator’s findings as work product. The Sixth District grants the employee a writ: putting the investigation’s adequacy at issue waives privilege and even core work product over the investigator’s factual findings and anything bearing on the investigation’s scope and adequacy.

Two Chico State physics professors sued the CSU Trustees for retaliation, alleging a sham investigation and sabotage of their move to a new university after they reported harassment. The Trustees moved to strike the claims under the anti-SLAPP statute as “based in part” on protected speech. The Third District affirms denial: a movant must analyze each claim element-by-element and identify which acts are protected — “based in part” is not enough.

Cambodian villagers forced to work at Thai seafood factories sued a U.S. marketer under the trafficking civil-remedy statute; their case was dismissed because the statute then reached only those who succeeded in benefiting, not those who attempted to. After Congress amended the law, the en banc Ninth Circuit holds the clarifying amendment retroactive — and that Landgraf governs all such amendments, overruling the “clarifying amendment” exception — reviving the claims.

A resident manager whose apartment came with the job refused to leave after she was terminated. The Appellate Division affirms an unlawful detainer judgment: housing provided as part of employment compensation is not a protected tenancy, the former manager became a tenant at sufferance or licensee outside the Tenant Protection Act, and her retaliatory-eviction defense failed for lack of evidence.

A fire-department mechanic repeatedly confronted management and then alluded to an incident in which a firefighter fatally shot another firefighter. The Second District affirms a three-year workplace violence restraining order under section 527.8: the veiled reference was a credible, implied threat outside the First Amendment, and the order’s firearm restriction survives Second Amendment review under Rahimi.

Must a California employer accommodate an employee who is not disabled but who cares for someone who is? Castro-Ramirez said in 2016 that FEHA “may reasonably be interpreted” to require it — and expressly declined to decide. Nine years on, no published California decision has answered, the Civil Rights Council’s 2020 request for public input produced no regulation, and CACI 2547 still calls the element optional. Meanwhile five federal district courts — Castro v. Classy, McVay, and 2025’s Acosta, Head, and De Wit — have all held that failure-to-accommodate and interactive-process claims may rest on associational disability. This analysis maps the statutory argument, the unpublished contrary authority, and how to plead the caregiver’s claim while the question stays open.

After a harbor patrol officer’s on-duty accident left him unable to work, the Port San Luis Harbor District told him retirement was his “single option” — then denied his CalPERS disability-retirement application and terminated him on a resignation theory it later admitted was false. Division Six affirmed summary judgment on his FEHA claim anyway: denial of disability-retirement payments is not an adverse employment action, because retirement benefits begin when employment ends, and a claimant who cannot perform his essential duties is not a “qualified individual” under Green. The remedy for a wrongful denial is an appeal to the Office of Administrative Hearings and administrative mandamus — a route Lowry lost by following a repealed procedure.

A unanimous Court of Appeal reversed summary judgment for Kaiser, holding that even though the employer granted every accommodation the employee requested, it could still be liable for failing to accommodate and failing to engage in the interactive process because, through her supervisor, it knew of but never provided a needed lighter-tasks accommodation. The court also reinstated the disability-discrimination and retaliation claims on a cat’s-paw theory.

In the Sixth District's treatise-level employment-MSJ opinion, a security supervisor laid off days before his expected return from knee surgery revives his disability discrimination and wrongful termination claims — the employer's RIF showing was inadequate under Guz's "roadmap" because it never explained retaining two lower-ranked supervisors, and its failure to accommodate, the timing, and an overpayment vendetta were substantial evidence of animus — while the retaliation claim fails because pre-2016 accommodation requests were not protected activity.

The Court of Appeal held that a plaintiff suing for failure to engage in the interactive process under Government Code section 12940, subdivision (n) must prove a reasonable accommodation was actually available. Substantial evidence supported finite leave as an available accommodation for the plaintiff’s carpal-tunnel (wrist) injury, but none supported any accommodation for her later shoulder injury. Because the general verdict did not reveal which disability the jury relied on, the judgment was reversed for a limited retrial.