AGE DISCRIMINATION ATTORNEY

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 LAWYER

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.

TOO OLD FOR JOB

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