Carney R. Shegerian

Employment lawsuits predominantly settle, head to a private arbitrator, or both.

Workplace litigation filed by Shegerian, on the other hand, goes to trial.

“I believe these cases need to be aired out,” Shegerian said. “The trials make a public showing of how bad conduct can be at the workplace. Someone needs to push back on it, otherwise there is no corrective behavior.”

Going to a jury brings risks. Shegerian had multiple setbacks this year including a high-profile loss in a case for which he represented a former Space Explorations Technologies Corp. employee who claimed he blew the whistle on the government contractor’s shoddy rocketing-testing practices. Blasdell v. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. et al., BC615112 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed April 1, 2016).

Shegerian believed that his client Jason Blasdell’s claims were unjustly whittled down at trial, and he has appealed the defense verdict.

A mere days after losing the SpaceX case, a downtown Los Angeles jury rewarded Shegerian’s client Rickey Moland $16.5 million, including $13.8 million in punitive damages, in a race discrimination and wrongful termination lawsuit filed against Moland’s former employer, McWane Inc., an Alabama water works company with a facility in Corona at which Moland worked.

Shegerian convinced the jury that Moland, an African-American, was an ethical and exemplary production supervisor, who was constantly subjected to racist insults and received no protection when he complained to his employer.

“It’s really a tale out of the 1920s South,” Shegerian said. “Two of my clients’ co-workers confirmed that they were calling my clients the worst racial epithets.”

Another victory came in March when Shegerian’s client Cynthia Begazo got $1.8 million in a disability discrimination, retaliation and wrongful termination case. Begazo v. Passages Malibu PHP LLC, BC595150 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Sept. 20, 2015).

Begazo alleged numerous violations against Passages, a rehabilitation center that Shegerian said caters to the elite, including being retaliated against for complaining about the center’s mistreatment of overweight workers.

“She was speaking up for people who were employed there,” Shegerian said.

— Matthew Blake