


An age discrimination attorney will assist employees over 40 in determining if they have a valid workplace age discrimination lawsuit. Improper treatment due to age under 40 is not protected. In the case of age discrimination, there is no such thing as reversed age discrimination. Thus, age discrimination is about improper workplace treatment to persons due to their age 40 and over. With the workforce aging and so many different younger generations in today’s workforce, age discrimination at work is on the rise. Age discrimination is not the easiest form of discrimination to prove, but it happens all the time.
Age discrimination lawyers will want to know:
• Was the employee over 40
replaced?
Was it a 1 for 1 replacement or did the job get assumed by
many people?
• The age of the replacement
• Whether the replacement is doing the same job for
substantially less pay
• Whether any comments were made about age, were those
comments by supervisors or managers
• The ages of the people involved in the employment
termination decision
• Whether there has been a pattern of getting rid of older
people, and if so did the same managers and supervisors do
so
Unless an employee wants to take a generally inadequate severance, an experienced age discrimination lawyer is needed to first evaluate whether the job termination was due to age over 40. Next, that experienced lawyer must actually file the lawsuit in court because large payouts on age discrimination cases rarely occur without the filing of an age discrimination lawsuit.
CALL 909-663-2100
to sue your employer for
age discrimination Offices in Ontario, Riverside, Tustin,
and Los Angeles County
Workplace age discrimination is court
business if due to age over 40, including age related
characteristics, there has been harassment, a job
termination, or the employee is forced to quit. General
feelings about not being treated right may not be
substantial enough for a lawsuit. Alternatively, the
situation may add up to a work stress claim in the workers
compensation system [link to a wc page], but not a
discrimination lawsuit in civil court. While a failure to
promote may be due to age, these are not typically the
types of cases an employee lawyer will take on a
contingency. Generally, employee lawyers take cases on a
contingency if there is a clear break in the employment
relationship due to an illegal reason, or there is serious
harassment due to a protected characteristic.
Job terminations due to age are amongst the wrongful
termination lawsuits that often have higher damages than
other wrongful termination lawsuits. It is often difficult
and unlikely an employee over a certain age will find
comparable employment, or within a reasonable amount of
time. These situations present large claims for past and
future lost wages. There are a number of howevers. One is
statistically given the employee’s age, education, race,
and health how many more years do statistics show they
would work? The second however is in order to claim lost
wages the employee must be actively looking for comparable
work. Older workers who decide it is time to take an
easier, less well paying job, and/or scale back on the
number of hours worked after a job termination due to age
cannot legitimately claim loss of the full amount of their
wages from the job they were wrongfully terminated from.
Emotional distress damages are also a serious damage for an
employee who cannot find comparable work due to their
age.
Serious harassment due to age means there has been
substantial harassment. A few inappropriate remarks without
a job termination are probably not enough to engage an age
discrimination lawyer. The time for the employee to engage
in litigation and the time it will take a lawyer to either
resolve a case or try the case through verdict and protect
against appeals makes the filing of an age related lawsuit
infeasible if the case is about a few stray remarks and
does not involve a job termination. Moreover, courts are
not very willing to allow lawsuits to go forward if they
only involve a few inappropriate comments.
Age related comments on a daily basis by a superior or
manager may justify an age harassment lawsuit in civil
court. Similar comments by a coworker that continue after
management is aware of the comments may also justify a
lawsuit for age harassment. Just like the comments needing
to be numerous, they do need to be somewhat clearly relate
to age. Often persons engaged in discriminatory conduct are
subtle. The more links that have to be proven the less
likely it is a case can be won. Having to convince a jury a
comment about an old battery really related to the employee
who was over 40 being old may be a hard sell. If the
comment was this company needs to get rid of all its old
batteries at such time an employee over 40 is hopelessly
powering themself to lift a heavy load of materials makes
the comment more self-explanatory.
Those of us over 40 would like to
believe we are never too old for a job. Stereotypes about
being too old for a job are problematic, and if expressed
by supervisors or managers may constitute evidence of age
discrimination. Concepts older women in marketing who do
not dye their hair are too old for the job are
discriminatory age based stereotypes. This is also an
example of an age plus sex based discriminatory comment.
Likewise, claims people over a certain age do not present
the image the company wants to present, or they don’t look
good in certain clothing including company uniforms sounds
ageist. But what if the employee’s age prevents them from
doing the job?
If a San Bernardino concrete worker over 40 has declared
due to age related factors he will no longer do bag pours
of concrete because it is too hard to lift 90 pound bags of
concrete he has admitted he is too old to do an essential
part of his job. Likewise, imagine a near sixty four year
old lawyer from Rancho Cucamonga who refuses to use
technology in the courtroom when doing a jury trial. Her
trial presentation is dull. The other lawyer allows the
jury to see all sorts of visuals projected onto the screen
while the 64 year old lawyer occasionally scribes in green
on a whiteboard the jury can barely see. If this lawyer
refuses to use modern courtroom technology because she
feels it is not worth learning how to do so because she
only has a few more years of trials in her she has
purposefully refused to do part of her job on the basis of
her age. That employee has admitted she is unable to do her
job effectively due to age. The Employment Lawyers Group
encounters new client callers like these examples. Defenses
like these are also made in age discrimination cases. If an
employee is refusing to do a significant or material part
of their job due to age, or they physically or mentally
cannot do so any longer, they cannot sue to for age
discrimination. Age discrimination requires employees be
able to perform essential portions of their job due to
age.
Some of our recent age
discrimination case results include:
$490,000 for female restaurant workers fired due to age
$125,000 for a branch manager of a security company fired
due to age
We serve clients throughout San Bernardino County, the
Inland Empire, and the rest of Los Angeles. We have offices
in Ontario, California, Riverside,
Tustin, and several in Los Angeles County.
An experienced California age discrimination law firm can help you determine whether you should sue for age discrimination. Call 909-663-2100