Legal Question in Business Law in California

You may want to conduct a survey in the area. Goodluck!

I am not sure about the exact number of small businesses that were sued, but I'm sure it's in the hundreds. Small businesses are getting hit with an increasing number of employment lawsuits. Check out my blog post on a recent Washington Times article about the number of disability discrimination lawsuits brought under the ADA doubling in the last five years due to the broader definition of disability:

http://laborandemploymentlawoffice.com/LALaborLawBlog/2012/06/01/employment-discrimination-lawsuits-on-the-rise-doubling-according-to-the-washington-times/

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Sorry, "small business(es)" is not category that the courts take note of, What is a small business?

Nobody keeps track of such things. You can look through the courts' records yourself and try to come up with an answer, but you may not always be able to tell from the papers whether a defendant qualifies as a small business. And as Mr. Kane notes, your definition of "small business" may not be the same as someone else's.

In addition, there are the related questions of (1) how many of the suits were pursued successfully and a judgment obtained against the small business; and (2) how many small businesses filed and won suits against various classes and types of defendants.

As an attorney who represents small businesses both as plaintiffs and defendants, and occasionally in the Inland Empire (say, Riverside and San Bernardino County Courts, excluding branches that serve mainly the desert areas), I'd say in a year's time well in excess of 1,000 suits would be filed involving business entities with fewer that 100 employees and less than $12 million in sales, with probably more than half involving the business as a defendant.

I'd go on to say that the overwhelming majority of these cases are settled or dismissed prior to final judgment.