Legal Question in Sexual Harassment in California

You cannot evaluate a settlement for sexual harassment by averaging them out. First of all, settlements are always confidential. Jury or court verdicts are not. So, there is no way to know what an average "settlement" is. There is no place to look for them.

Verdicts are reported, but to get a verdict, you must go to trial and win. Even then, many verdicts are never paid, as awarded because of appeals which may overturn the verdict or a confidential settlement which may occur pending the appeal.

More importantly, one cannot generalize a sexual harassment claim. Each case is different and must be evaluated on many factors, such as the vulnerability of the victim, the egregiousness of the conduct, how severe and pervasive it was, the position of the employee in the company, the size of the company and the degree of damage or harm the harassment caused, just to name a few factors.

Experienced employment law attorneys may be able to give a rough assessment of how to value such cases, once we know all the facts, but until the case is actually litigated or mediated, even we don't know what a case will settle for.

In essence what my colleague is suggesting in his well-reasoned post is, bring your case to an experienced employment attorney for a consultation. Many attorneys might not even charge for the initial consultation, and some might even handle a good case on a contingency basis. Please don't wait to do so, though, as there are strict time limits on filing a claim and a lawsuit.

There is no 'average' or 'normal' or even any rules, guidelines or formula for determining. Every case is different. The range of value is from zero to millions, and high value is tough to achieve. It depends upon all the provable and credible facts, evidence, testimony, damages, etc. The value of the case settlement is determined by the guy that writes the check, or at trial by the jury. If this is in SoCal courts, and if you believe you have a case with merit, value and collectability, and you're serious about getting counsel to represent you, feel free to contact me. I've been doing these for over 20 years.