Legal Question in Employment Law in California

Based on the zip code and timing, I think it is safe to assume that you are the person who posted this: https://www.lawguru.com/answers/answer/show/866356360 Sorry you didn't like my answer.

To answer your present question, I do not favor the employer. My employment law caseload is almost entirely plaintiff's work. I think it totally bites that there is no meaningful legal protection for employees unless they can hang a racial, gender or other discrimination claim on the employer, or violation of some other specific statutory protection. Unfortunately that is the state of the law. Any legal information sites that tell you otherwise are misleading people in the hope of landing clients.

I have enough prospective clients at my door looking for help, when they don't have a case, that I would rather be straight with people on LawGuru about their chances than have them calling me or emailing me looking for representation I cannot in good conscience offer them.

As for my knowledge and experience with technology, in the early 1990's I was working on my laptop and listening to a portable CD player on BART when most people didn't even have a computer in their office or a CD player at home. In 1991 I was reviewing and modifying briefs that junior associates had drafted in San Francisco, while I was on vacation in Colorado, and most other lawyers were still dictating letters on a Dictaphone. I had Conner Peripherals as a client from 1992 until it merged with Seagate. Were you even in kindergarten by 1992?

I've had the same ISP account longer than the company that now services it has been in existence. In 1999, I declined to purchase a software company I was personally looking at acquiring, in part because I was not comfortable with the dependence a company using the AS400 platform has on its programmers and consultants. It is too bad your former employer did not have my insight. . . . Just a thought.

I ultimately joined a VAR in 2000 that handled Epicor, Solomon and Great Plains, and later Blackbaud Financial Edge and operated it with my wife and a partner for five years, owning it with my wife for three of the five.

I installed a wired LAN in my home including a router, two switches, three printservers, firewall and static DSL connection long before DHCP, much less network set-up wizards, were available. Later I made it wireless. I'm sure you could do the same in your sleep, but I bet you couldn't draft a brief to save your life.

But all that is ultimately irrelevant, because while technology and computers have transformed the workplace in a great many ways, and true computer law is relatively new and evolving, all the new technology has done nothing to change the old long standing laws governing the relationships between employers and employees. You still have to prove illegal discrimination on recognized statutory grounds, or harassment on the same grounds, or breach of an employment contract, in order to have any kind of case for wrongful termination.

Technology employees are not special. The law is the same as for anyone else. Absent a personal employment contract or union contract, they are at-will employees like everyone else, and can be fired at any time for any reason that is not specifically prohibited by anti-discrimination, whistle-blower, ADA or other law. They have no right to be protected from unfair treatment or co-workers who are out to get them, if management is stuipid enough to let that kind of thing happen. It stinks, it is morally wrong, but it is the state of the law. And it doesn't matter a whit whether your job is in "technology" or ditch digging, the law is the same.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly to your mistaken belief about my bias: your questions go out to at least dozens of attorneys, maybe a hundred or more even. I don't really know the total count. With the exception of paid questions, my answering a question leaves it open indefinitely for any other attorney to answer. If some other attorney thinks my answer is off base, they are free to chime in with a correction, a different opinion, or even to call me an "ignorant slut." (You probably are too young to even get that reference; trust me it was really funny on the first season of Saturday Night Live).

So, having read my "terribly one sided" responses to employement law questions, did you see many other answers to the same questions disagreeing with me? No, I know you didn't, because I follow up for my own professional development, and just a general reality check. I think that really says all there needs to be said about how "one sided" or old and out of touch I am. . . . Just a thought.

I'll probably regret getting involved in this question, but.... Without commenting one way or the other on Mr. McCormick's "attitude" or advice, I would point out to you that he is [presumably] answering questions to provide useful free guidance, while advertisements and web pages of attorneys seeking clients, business, income, retainer payments, consultation fees, etc., have a different agenda. I gather from his prior answers that he practices plaintiff's employment law, as do I, and thus is unlikely to be 'intentionally' turning away prospective clients who 'believe' they have valid claims by telling them they don't. That you do not like the general truth reflected in our answers, that employees have substantially and increasingly limited 'rights' in an "at will employment" state, is a problem for you to deal with without 'attacking the messenger'. We attorneys get many people who TELL us without hesitation what the 'law' is, frequently quite in error. The law on employment in an "at will employment" state IS arguably quite unfair and one sided, against employees. Attorneys are supposed to deal with that reality, and give opinion and take cases where we can actually accomplish something for the client, and turn away cases where there is no valid claim. You can always find someone you can pay enough to tell you what you want to hear. Yes, there are attorneys like that. You should seek the truth instead, even if you don't like the answer.