J. Bernard Alexander III

Alexander started his career in law as an insurance defense trial attorney. He began taking on a small amount of employment cases, and found the work he did for employees more fulfilling. Plaintiffs’ employment litigation soon became the primary focus of his practice. Nine years ago, he and his partners founded Alexander Krakow + Glick.

Alexander regularly handles employment claims of discrimination, harassment and retaliation based on gender, race, age, sex, sexual orientation and disability.

In a wrongful termination case that wrapped up earlier this year, he obtained a $10 million verdict for a former Office Depot Inc. warehouse manager. Flores v. Office Depot Inc., BC556173 (Los Angeles Super. Ct. Feb. 6, 2017).

While the defense maintained Mark Flores lost his job due to poor performance, jurors decided Office Depot retaliated against Flores after he refused to fire two older workers and took leave to recover from surgery. Flores was awarded $2 million in compensatory damages and another $8 million in punitive damages.

Alexander said there’s good news for California employees in the area of wage equality. Since updating and expanding the California Fair Pay Act in recent years, the state now has one of the toughest equal pay laws in the country.

“These are laws that basically narrow the scope of what you have to show in order to demonstrate that women are getting paid at a lesser amount than men, or that one group is being paid inequitably to another group,” he said. “Employers now have a duty to make sure that there is no wage disparity between women and men and other groups.”

Alexander has been involved with the California Employment Lawyers Association for several years. He founded the CELA Trial College in 2014 and continues to manage the three-day event.

“The faculty is made up of the best plaintiffs’ employment lawyers in the state,” he said. “I’m proud of creating that and getting CELA and other recognized trial attorneys to devote their time to train others in how to succeed in trial.”

— Jennifer Chung Klam