California employment case index

Green v. Ralee Engineering Co. (1998) 19 Cal.4th 66 holds that administrative safety regulations — here FAA airline-safety rules — can supply the fundamental public policy supporting a Tameny wrongful-discharge claim, extending Gantt beyond constitutional and statutory sources.

An undocumented assembler bought false papers to get hired, then sued for relentless sexual harassment. The employer's only defense was after-acquired evidence of her document fraud. Following McKennon, the Court of Appeal reversed: after-acquired evidence is no complete bar to a FEHA harassment claim, an undocumented worker keeps full employment-law protection while employed, and the defense's factual predicate — whether the employer in fact would have fired her — is a jury question.

A married couple fired by a law firm sued for wrongful termination, but the firm discovered during litigation that both had concealed felony convictions. The Court of Appeal affirmed summary judgment: their at-will acknowledgments doomed the contract claims, and the after-acquired-evidence doctrine barred the statutory and public-policy claims because the Camps had misrepresented a government-imposed job qualification, leaving them unlawfully unqualified for the position. Camp marks the point where after-acquired evidence shifts from limiting remedies to barring recovery outright.

In McKennon v. Nashville Banner Publishing Co. (1995) 513 U.S. 352, a 62-year-old secretary discharged in what the employer conceded for summary-judgment purposes was age discrimination admitted in deposition that she had copied confidential company documents during her final year. The lower courts held this after-acquired evidence barred all ADEA relief. A unanimous Supreme Court, per Justice Kennedy, reversed. Such evidence does not bar liability — the ADEA violation that prompted the discharge cannot be disregarded — but it bears on the remedy: as a general rule it forecloses reinstatement and front pay, and back pay runs only from the date of the unlawful discharge to the date the employer discovered the wrongdoing. And the employer must first prove the wrongdoing was so severe that it would in fact have discharged the employee on that ground alone.

A 10-year employee sued for wrongful discharge and age discrimination; the employer then discovered application misrepresentations made nearly a decade earlier and won summary judgment on the theory that the fraud forfeited all remedies. The Court of Appeal reversed, declining to adopt a blanket rule that material application falsification is a complete defense to a claim the employer did not know about when it fired the worker. The first published California decision on the point, Cooper anticipated the Supreme Court's McKennon by less than a year.

In Lakin v. Watkins Associated Industries (1993) 6 Cal.4th 644, a unanimous California Supreme Court resolved three recurring procedural and damages questions: a postjudgment order denying discovery-sanction (cost-of-proof) attorney fees is separately appealable; a personal-injury plaintiff bears the burden of proving which portion of a general award is “damages for personal injury” before claiming Civil Code section 3291 prejudgment interest; and that interest never accrues on punitive damages. The court reversed the Court of Appeal and remanded.