Personal Injury Law

Sacramento Firefighter Sues To Prevent Forced Retirement, Part 13 of 19

By Moseley Collins, Esq.

(Please note: the names and locations of all parties have been changed to protect the confidentiality of the participants in this workplace/sex discrimination case and its proceedings.)

Significantly, in Yanowitz the California Supreme Court addressed this tolling concept as it relates to the continuing violation doctrine: In Richards, we recognized that a strict approach to the statute of limitations could encourage early litigation, and that in order to minimize the filing of unripe lawsuits and to promote the conciliatory resolution of claims, the FEHA statute of limitations should be interpreted liberally to allow employers and employees an opportunity to resolve disputes informally. Id., at 1057. That is precisely what plaintiff tried to do: That is, he tried to convince the City not to move forward with his retirement application in a variety of ways, but had no success. This had the effect of delaying the triggering of the statute of limitations on plaintiff's disability and retaliation claims. As the California Supreme Court stated in Richards:

[I]t is contrary to the purposes of the FEHA to interpret its statute of limitations to encourage premature litigation at the expense of informal conciliation...

In Richards, the employer argued that the statute of limitations on a FEHA discrimination claim began running at the time the employee was notified that the employer intended to discharge him, rather than on the official date of the discharge, and that as a result, the employee's claims were untimely because they were filed more than one-year after notification. Here, the City is really making the same argument. The City claims that the FEHA's statute of limitations began running on the day plaintiff became aware that the City was seeking his retirement (April 26th, when the retirement application was submitted) rather than on the day the employment relationship was actually severed, which wasn't until January 20, 2005.

Full post as published by Sacramento Injury Lawyer Blog on September 15, 2009 (boomark / email).