I apologize for another week without a podcast, but it’s been a slow news week, and I’ve been attending to family matters.  However, I’m back!

WageLaw: Senator Feinstein Likes Arbitration
Shaw Valenza: California Court of Appeal Upholds 30x Attorney’s Fee Award
Shaw Valenza: California Court of Appeal Enforces Employment at Will [Again]
CalBizLit: California — Not a Judicial Hell Hole?
elinfonet.com: Cookie-Cutter Employment Policies Don’t Cut it

This week I will be attending to some personal/family business, so there will be no posting until at least Thursday.  I hope to return full-force after Christmas.

WageLaw: Telling Employees They Will Need to Agree to Arbitration Is Not Itself an Agreement to Arbitrate  [Mitri]
Jeremy Horowitz: Court Determines That Not All Inappropritate Conduct Gives Rise to Claim of Sexual Harassment. [Mokler]
Workplace Prog Blog: Is This The End of Employer-Provided Health Insurance?

The site was apparently down to a misconfiguration in my .htaccess file.  I am working on the problem, but until then things might function erratically.

Rumor has it that a three-agency task force is conducting surprise audits, primarily of restaurants in Central California.

More in the Fresno Bee.

The exception to the rule that there’s no such thing as bad publicity?

California’s scandal-plagued government-run workers’ compensation insurance company spent more than half a billion dollars over the last decade for outside marketing help that often provided “minimal services,” a scathing new state audit shows.

The LA Times and Sacramento Bee have more.  (h/t Rough & Tumble)

Hello, folks.  There will be regular posting this week, but no Podcast.

Next week, there will be a hiatus while I attend to a family matter.  Everything should be back in full force after Christmas.

Workplace Prof Blog: EEOC Releases Fact Sheet on Employer Tests
WageLaw: Overtime Claims Released Via Severance Agreement

Don’t forget this week’s podcast.

Have a great weekend.

With my thanks to an observer at the oral argument who wishes to remain anonymous:

Overall, I recall the defense focused on the implication for having supervisors personally liable (i.e., if supervisors are just following order from the top).  The plaintiff’s counsel responded by comparing this scenario to a Nazi soldier who kills following an order from the top (i.e., that soldier should be personally liable for the killing).

There was also a lot of discussion/questioning from the justices about how there is no personal liability for the act of discrimination  - - yet the plaintiff’s position is to find personal liability for retaliation that resulted from the discrimination (i.e., if the manager discriminates against an employee, manager is not personally liable.  if the manager subsequently fires the employee for reporting the discriminatory conduct, we then can find the manager personally liable for the retaliation).  Either Justice Chin or Justice Corrigan asked the plaintiff’s counsel: what mental state does a plaintiff have to show in order to find the individual manager personally liable.  I think the response was “animus intent.”

So, the Nuremberg Defense argument? Hmmm…. Personally, I find the constant comparison of everything to the Holocaust… trivializing of it.

This is not about denying a remedy to a plaintiff–it’s about leverage, so I’m not sure I see the “just taking orders” issue as all that relevant, but maybe I’m just turned off by the context.

This week I discuss Torrey Pines and judicial economy.

 

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Happy Hanukkah.

. . . I will not be posting a podcast until after the oral argument in Torry Pines, which will be the major theme of the podcast. I will also have an extensive post on the same topic.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Apparently, the California Channel is not broadcasting today’s oral arguments (maybe because they aren’t in Sac?), nor are they being streamed by audio.  I’ll have to rely on those who could be there to  give a more detailed report.  The podcast should be up shortly.