Daniel L. Stormer

A longtime civil rights and employment attorney, Stormer often takes cases with broader social justice themes. One case, a wrongful termination and discrimination lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, settled in February for $920,000 and was a key admission by the state agency.

“We forced CDR to admit that they discriminate against pregnant women in assignments,” Stormer said. Looserelli v. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation et al., CIVDS1418794 (San Bernardino Super. Ct., filed Sept. 25, 2014).

Stormer’s client Crystal Loosereli was a prison guard in San Bernardino County, and her doctor said that she could not be around chemical agents wafted by guards. Also, Loosereli could not fit into her utility belt during pregnancy.

The solution should have been simple, Stormer argued: the Corrections Department accommodate their employee and briefly relegate her to a non-physical post such as working in the mail room. Instead, the Corrections Department let her go. “I cannot fathom why they would take such a position,” Stormer said. The case settled in mid-trial.

Stormer has several high-profile wrongful termination cases involving former University of Southern California football coach Steve Sarkisian, ex-Starz LLC executive Keno Thomas, and former Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP lawyer Felix LeBron.

Arguably his biggest case on deck is a lawsuit filed on behalf of Cambodian workers who Stormer said provided labor in almost slave-like conditions to Los Angeles seafood companies and were exposed to dangerous levels of chlorine. Keo Ratha et al. v. Phattana Seafood Co. Ltd. et al., CV16-4271 (C.D. Cal., filed June 15, 2016).

Stormer said defendant seafood companies have not given an inch, and he expects the case to go to trial. “The defendants are maintaining they’re purer than the driven snow,” Stormer said.

— Matthew Blake