Sep. 12, 2013
Paul W. Cane
See more on Paul W. CanePaul Hastings LLP | San Francisco | Practice type: Litigation
Cane wants juries to address the matter at hand, so he was pleased when the California Court of Appeal ruled for his client, Lucasfilm Ltd., saying a jury should have been told it could only find the studio liable for pregnancy discrimination, not for being unfair.
"The jury has to be told to focus on discrimination and retaliation and only that, and that a jury should not second guess a company's business judgment on any issue," Cane said. "This issue really does come up in almost every single-plaintiff case."
The case had garnered the plaintiff a headline-grabbing award of $113,830 and $1.1 million in attorney fees, but appellate justices granted Lucasfilm a new trial on a variety of grounds.
Most importantly, it found that the defense's request for a jury instruction was improperly denied. The defense had wanted to instruct members of the jury that even if they thought the plaintiff's firing was a bad decision, it had to be discriminatory to merit a finding of liability. Veronese v. Lucasfilm Ltd., 212 Cal. App. 4th 1 (2012).
Cane feels the ruling will help businesses in future discrimination lawsuits.
"Employers in every case will, or at least should, ask for this kind of business judgment instruction," Cane said.
Plaintiffs' attorneys saw the ruling differently, arguing that the jury instruction would mean a company would get off the hook for dismissing an employee out of concern for her unborn fetus. The appellate opinion addressed this issue, to the dismay of lawyers who represent pregnant workers.
"That piece of the opinion did get it a lot of complaints from plaintiffs' lawyers," Cane said. "But it really was not the focus of the case, and it really wasn't an argument that Lucasfilm made."
Cane, who belongs to the California Academy of Appellate Lawyers as well as the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers, was also heartened by the state Supreme Court's decision in a case he argued for the city of Santa Monica. That ruling held that juries must find discrimination was a significant motivation for firing an employee, rather than just one of many reasons. Harris v. City of Santa Monica, 56 Cal. 4th 203 (2013).
"Those two decisions work fairly nicely together, in that both held to be reversible error a jury instructional issue," Cane said. "That doesn't happen very often."
- LAURA HAUTALA
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