California employment case index

A PAGA plaintiff proved Labor Code violations but recovered about one percent of the $56 million maximum he calculated, and his attorney fees were cut by a 0.70 negative multiplier. The Fourth District affirms: section 2699(e)(2) mandates no method for reducing penalties — per-employee is fine — and the trial court adequately justified the fee multiplier, leaving the “heightened scrutiny” question for the Supreme Court.

A former Academy Mortgage employee won a False Claims Act qui tam case after the government declined to intervene, and her counsel obtained a fee award enhanced by a 1.75 lodestar multiplier. The Ninth Circuit reverses the enhancement: above-lodestar multipliers are reserved for the “rare and exceptional” case, cannot rest on factors already in the lodestar, and require a reviewable methodology.

A sheriff’s deputy proved every element of his whistleblower retaliation claim — and still left the courthouse owing costs. The jury found his protected disclosures were a factor in the County’s actions against him, but also that the County would have made the same decisions anyway. Division Four held that a plaintiff defeated by the section 1102.6 same-decision defense who obtains no relief has not brought a “successful action” under section 1102.5(j): no attorney’s fees, and the employer is the prevailing party for costs. The panel declined to extend Harris v. City of Santa Monica’s FEHA rule, agreed the contrary result would be “a rational policy choice,” and pointedly left the fix to the Legislature.

When a trial court takes an across-the-board percentage cut to a prevailing plaintiff’s lodestar, must it explain why that particular percentage — or is a general finding of overlitigation enough? Warren demanded case-specific explanation and Snoeck brought that rule into FEHA; Morris rejected it as imported federal law, and Cash v. County of Los Angeles — a 30 percent, $195,234 haircut affirmed over Justice Baker’s meat-cleaver dissent — squarely joined Morris. The Supreme Court granted review on August 20, 2025 (S291827). Until it rules, Cash is persuasive-only under rule 8.1115(e)(1), the published split remains live, and the smart fee motion is built to win under either standard — starting with a written request for specific findings.

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.