California employment case index

Government Code section 12965(b) governs both fee and cost awards in FEHA actions and makes them discretionary under the asymmetric Christiansburg standard: a prevailing plaintiff ordinarily recovers fees and costs, but a prevailing defendant may recover them only if the action was objectively frivolous, unreasonable,…

In Salas v. Sierra Chemical Co. (2014) 59 Cal.4th 407, a production worker who had obtained his job with a false Social Security number sued under FEHA for disability discrimination and retaliation; after litigation began, the employer discovered the fraud and won summary judgment on after-acquired-evidence and unclean-hands theories. The California Supreme Court reversed. It held that Senate Bill No. 1818 (Gov. Code § 7285; Civ. Code § 3339; Lab. Code § 1171.5) extends FEHA's remedies to workers “regardless of immigration status,” and that federal immigration law (IRCA, as read in Hoffman Plastic) does not preempt those state remedies except as to lost-pay damages for the period after the employer discovers the worker's ineligibility. Neither after-acquired evidence nor unclean hands is a complete defense; both bear on the remedy, not on liability.

Neither Labor Code section 1194 nor section 218.5 authorizes an award of attorney fees to a party that prevails on a section 226.7 claim; such claims are not actions for the nonpayment of minimum wages or overtime (§1194) and are not the kind of nonpayment-of-wages action that triggers §218.5 fee-shifting, so each…

A trial court has discretion to deny or reduce a FEHA fee award when the plaintiff’s recovery is modest and the case could have been litigated as a limited civil case; where the fees sought are grossly disproportionate to a minor recovery (here, the judgment could have been rendered in a limited civil case), the court…