Orange County Employment Lawyers

Employment discrimination is prohibited under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). FEHA applies to all employers in California with at least five employees. Discrimination can include any adverse employment action taken due to an employee’s protected characteristic. Protected characteristics under FEHA include color, race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, marital status, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, age, denial of pregnancy disability leave, and denial of family and medical leave. Our Orange County employment attorneys can help an employee bring a claim based on discrimination related to any of these traits. Federal laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) also prohibit discrimination based on protected characteristics.

Disability discrimination is prohibited under both FEHA and the ADA. FEHA forbids employment discrimination based on mental or physical disabilities. Disabilities are defined as physical or mental impairments that limit a substantial life function. FEHA prohibits discrimination on the basis of not only an actual mental or physical disability but also a perceived disability or a history of being disabled of which the employer knows. Under both FEHA and the ADA, you are entitled to a reasonable accommodation for your disability unless providing the accommodation would pose an undue hardship for your employer.

Sexual harassment is prohibited under FEHA in workplaces of all sizes. It is also prohibited under Title VII. Sexual harassment can include any unwelcome sexual advances, jokes, insults, inappropriate comments, touching, pranks, memes, and assault. Quid pro quo harassment occurs if your job is conditioned on submitting to sexual advances or providing sexual favors. Moreover, our employment attorneys can help an Orange County employee bring a hostile work environment claim if they were subject to unwanted sexual conduct, advances, or comments due to their sex, and these actions were pervasive or severe enough to alter the terms and conditions of employment.

If you or a family member become sick, you may need to take leave from work. Many employers are required to provide eligible employees with job-protected leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) or the California Family Rights Act (CFRA). Under the FMLA, your employer is covered if it is a private business with a minimum of 50 employees over the course of at least 20 work weeks in the current or previous calendar year. If you are eligible and there is a qualifying event, such as the birth of a newborn, an adoption, or a sick family member, a covered employer should provide you with 12 weeks of job-protected leave each year. Your employer is not allowed to discriminate or retaliate against you for taking this leave. It should return you to the same or an equivalent position when you return from the leave. The CFRA provides similar, overlapping protections, and it also covers public agencies and employers with a minimum of 20 employees if the leave is needed to bond with a new child.

Under FEHA and the federal anti-discrimination laws, your employer should not retaliate against you for engaging in a protected activity. Retaliation can include any negative action that would cause a reasonable person to fear engaging in a protected activity; retaliatory actions can include termination, demotion, transfer to a less favorable position, loss of pay, or loss of bonuses. Protected activities include making a good-faith complaint to your company’s human resources department, filing a charge with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), or assisting with an investigation into a coworker’s discrimination or harassment complaint. Our Orange County employment lawyers can advise you on whether you may have a retaliation claim.

Personal injury lawsuits may be brought to obtain damages arising out of incidents such as car accidents, truck accidents, and slip and fall accidents. Many personal injury lawsuits are brought under a theory of negligence. This means that the defendant needed to use a certain level of care, but they did not use the appropriate care, and this caused the plaintiff’s injuries. The standard of care is often what a reasonable person would have done in the same situation, but it may be more specific in some contexts, such as premises liability claims.

If you were injured in a car accident caused by another driver, you may be able to recover compensation by bringing a negligence claim. Drivers may act negligently by speeding, tailgating, weaving, driving drunk, driving while fatigued, texting while driving, or failing to obey traffic signals or signs. Sometimes the cause of an accident is not immediately obvious, though. It is important to work with an attorney who can investigate all the potential causes, retain experts, and bring all the at-fault parties into the litigation.

Property owners have a duty to use reasonable care in how they manage their property. If you were injured in a slip and fall accident on someone else’s property, you may be able to recover damages by bringing a premises liability lawsuit. You will need to prove that the defendant was negligent in the use or maintenance of the property, and the defendant’s negligence was a substantial factor in causing your harm. To show that the defendant was negligent, you will need to establish that it had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous property condition that caused your slip and fall.

The Serendib Law Firm represents foreign nationals in deportation defense as well as the preparation of non-immigrant and immigrant petitions. Forms of relief that may be available to protect you from deportation include withholding of removal, adjustment of status, cancellation of removal, asylum, waivers in immigration court, and Convention Against Torture protections. If you are coming to the U.S. only temporarily for work, tourism, or education, you may apply for a non-immigrant visa. If you hope to immigrate permanently to the U.S., you may be able to obtain this status through an employment-based or family-based petition.

Business litigation may involve issues such as fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, insurance coverage, non-compete clauses, and intellectual property. Some of the most common disputes involve contracts. In a contract, the parties bind themselves to specific obligations in return for consideration. If a party fails to meet its obligations, the other party may sue for breach of contract. Available remedies vary depending on the nature of the contract and the breach.

Whether you are facing employment discrimination or worried about paying medical bills after a car accident, you should contact the Serendib Law Firm. We represent clients in Orange, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties. Call us at 1-800-LAW-8825 (800-529-8825) or complete our online form to discuss your case with an employment lawyer in Orange County or seek guidance in a personal injury, business, or immigration matter.