Many San Diego employers will face retaliation and harassment accusations in the course of their careers.  The employer defense attorneys at the Watkins firm have more than four decades of successful, proven experience in these cases, and winning cases our clients had serious concerns about.  Accusations are one thing, proving them in a Court of Law is another.  Proving the impact of those allegations is an even higher legal bar for the accuser.  If you are a San Diego or California employer who is facing an employee lawsuit or PAGA action for any reason, or if you suspect an employee is “padding the file” in preparation of an action we invite you to contact our experienced and proven legal team for a free consultation at 858-535-1511.

Employer defense matters revolve on facts, documentation and evidence of emotional, physical or financial impact in the life of the accuser.  All of these must survive the harsh light of legal review, discovery, the rules of evidence and the actual presence of damages or other substantial consequences.  Many of our employer defense clients thought their case was hopeless.  “It’s her word against mine,” or “Things were taken out of context, that isn’t what happened at all…” or “I can’t prove that didn’t happen.”  From the perspective of 40+ years of experience in these employer defense matters such as retaliation and harassment cases we can provide genuine reason for hope: things are not as bad as they often seem and the level of proof in these cases is quite high.

It’s one thing to make an allegation.  It’s an entirely different matter to prove something in a Court of Law and that it had a traumatizing or substantial impact on the life of the plaintiff.  One example involved allegations of sexual harassment including alleged documentation of touching and inappropriate remarks.  The plaintiff described devastating emotional impact in the lawsuit and demanded a substantial sum.  During the discovery phase there was no evidence whatsoever to support these assertions.  Our seasoned attorneys evaluate every aspect of the allegations and the impact on the plaintiff from social media to extensive interviews of friends, family and work associates.  The facts of the plaintiffs posts on social media, interviews of the people around her and co-workers resulted in a complete victory for our client and dismissal of the case.

Pro-Tip: “there’s been numerous over the years, numerous because people are adults and you rarely get a sexual harassment case where somebody didn’t say something sexual to somebody. And it’s almost always the guys saying something to the women. But we’ve had plaintiff cases where we’ve had to worry about, you know, whether they were going to be proven to be offended or not. We’ve defended California employers in all kinds of cases.

There was a major national restaurant chain and I represented one of their managers, and was able to get the worker’s compensation insurance company to pay for the manager’s individual defense.

Because otherwise, I mean he’s got nothing. The other lawyers were, they wanted $60 million in settlement, press releases the entire 11 week trial was on TV every night. And my client was accused of doing things that these women claim offended them. He would put his finger or wet finger in their ear or his tongue in their ear, have them all tell dirty jokes. And then they come back after the fact with some lawyers and say this was really offensive to them. And so it was quite embarrassing for him, quite embarrassing for the company, until we won!

And we were able to show that all of these women were not as offended as they claimed to be. And if you get a bunch of reasonable adult jurors, they get offended when they see people make claims and try to exaggerate and boast and just stretch the truth for money or acting with false indignation. And so if you can just keep your eye on the ball during this 11 weeks of trial and take all the punches. Because when your client takes a punch, you take a punch. 

You can get the right message across to the jury and the judge. Because if the judge doesn’t believe you, you’ve got to at least a good case to present to the jury, they’ll take it away. But if you can go on this line, and also you’ve got to rely on the fact that judges see more of these cases than your regular lawyer. So they’ll, 99% of the time, figure out where you’re going and just watch it happen. And so that’s how we win retaliation and harassment cases, and that’s how we won with the TJ Fridays case.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

The employer defense attorneys at the Watkins Firm invite you to review our podcast Episode 4 – Risk and Guidance for California Employers as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.  Ask about our 40+ year track record of success in retaliation and harassment as well as discrimination cases and the positive impact we can make on your case.