Carney R. Shegerian

Shegerian, whose firm is currently marking its 20th anniversary, has won 73 jury trials during his career, including 31 seven-figure verdicts.

Those aren't all employment cases. About one-third involve personal injuries, such a man who died after being rear-ended on the freeway by a Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus, resulting in an $8.35 million jury award in March.

To Shegerian, there's a similarity between personal injury and employment cases. "In both areas you can pick somebody up from a bad situation, turn it around and help them get on their feet."

Shegerian spends most of his time on individual workplace disputes. In November, for instance, he won a $7 million jury verdict, currently under appeal, on a wrongful termination claim by sports columnist T.J. Simers, who said the Los Angeles Times firing him after he suffered a stroke.

In March, the Los Angeles City Council approved payment of a $3.8 million jury verdict that Shegerian had won for City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation & Parks gardener James Duffy over disability and race discrimination claims. Duffy — the only non-Hispanic in his work group — said he was harassed and passed over for promotion by a foreman who reportedly said he hated "white people."

Shegerian said the verdict should "put employers on notice that discrimination against any race is illegal."

As the baby boom ages, Shegerian has been handling a growing number of age discrimination suits.

One of his biggest recent cases involved Bob Nickel, facilities manager at a Staples Inc. outlet in La Mirada, who claimed that he was harassed, pressured to quit and then fired in 2011 at age 64 as part of a management plan to purge older workers.

Shegerian said it can be challenging to bring an age discrimination case, since some jurors might think "it's just part of the natural order of things" for aging workers to leave their jobs.

But Shegerian bolstered Nickel's claim with strong witness testimony, including a supervisor who testified that the management team made a "concerted attempt to get rid of older, higher paid workers" and replace them with younger people who would work for less money.

In 2014, a Los Angeles jury awarded Nickel $26.1 million, including $13 million in punitive damages against the division where he worked; $9 million in punitive damages against Staples; $2.4 million in compensatory damages; and $863,416 in economic damages.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mark V. Mooney struck down the punitive damages against Staples. But this May, the 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld the remaining $16.3 million, meaning Nickel may finally receive his compensation.

"It's been almost five years since he was fired and two years since the jury reached a verdict and so far, he hasn't received a dime," Shegerian said. "It's been very difficult to explain to him how these things go on so long in court."

— Dean Calbreath