How to Sue Your Employer, California Style

This past weekend, CEDR was in California teaching a CE class to medical practice owners on California employment law and how it affects practice employers. While we were riding on the BART, we saw this advertisement (see left) posted at eye level in every available ad space.

Yes, you read it correctly. It’s an advertisement TO your employees on how they could sue YOU.

Here is what upsets me. I can honestly say that in 10 years of working with medical and dental practices, I have NEVER once had an employer ask me how they could screw over their employees. Instead, 99.9% of all practice owners, once alerted to an employment rule or law, immediately begin to figure out how to comply with it. As would any sane, reasonable human being.

But this advertisement is clearly designed with one purpose in mind: to encourage one of your employees to call in and attempt to sue you. The attorneys are not going to call you and let you know you have an issue. They are going to come after you, figurative guns blazing, because the law firm knows that employment complaints like these can often lead to tens of thousands of dollars in settlements and legal fees, of which they get a hefty cut.

But wait, you may think to yourself, “I follow all the rules. I’m a good employer. No one on my team would look twice at that ad.”

That may be the case, but it only takes one mistake with one unhappy employee to topple that house of cards. In fact, statistics show that 6 out of 10 employers in the United States have faced an employment lawsuit in the last 5 years. And California’s constantly-changing employment laws and anti-employer climate makes your state particularly litigious… and not in your favor.

This ad is concrete proof that there are law firms and attorneys out there advertising to your employees about suing you. As such, we highly recommend you don’t try to go it alone. The rules in your state have gotten so complex that even a simple firing can go very wrong, very quickly. Running and managing your practice these days requires that you take the time to be educated about the risks before you ever make an adverse hiring/management/firing decision.

If we can be of service, please let us know. We’d love to help. Our handbooks are affordable, individually crafted by attorneys, and most importantly, meant to keep you safe. And we are very good at helping you understand and comply with all the rules in your state. You will note that the advertisement lists several ways your employee could get you in trouble. We know about all of them and have built-in protections to stop the problem from occurring.

Give us a call at 866-414-6056 or send me an email at pauledwards@cedrsolutions.com and I’ll be in touch.