J. Bernard Alexander, III

Alexander is regularly brought in as co-counsel for employees suing their employers, especially when the defense is making lowball settlement offers.

He points out to the employers’ counsel that he has tried 60 cases, frequently to large verdicts for the plaintiffs. He predicts he will do it again in the current case, and he tells them how.

“There’s nothing you can do to prevent it,” he adds.

“That gets them to settle cases.”

The how requires convincing the jury of the great emotional distress the employee suffered by being harassed, discriminated against or wrongly fired. “Emotional distress is the most important part of the case,” he said.

The value of that distress does not rise with the plaintiff’s income. If anything, Alexander said, the less employees make, the more emotional distress they suffer when fired. “One of my pet peeves is valuing emotional distress based on how much the employee is making,” he said.

The key to obtaining large emotional distress damages is demonstrating the unique pains the plaintiff experienced because of job problems, such as losing the family home or even admitting to family about being fired.

“You find the most telling moment in someone’s life when this has happened, and then you try to walk them through it and explain to the jury what they went through from the moment they were terminated up until the moment we get to trial,” Alexander said.

If he does that well, the jury rewards his client. “The beauty of employment law is that every one of those jurors had been an employee and they know what it’s like to be mistreated by an employer.”

His approach has secured some large settlements for his clients, including a $2.25 million deal early this year for five Asian-American police officers who were harassed and mocked by white officers in the city of San Gabriel, which ironically is a majority-Asian community. “Most of [the plaintiffs] spoke another language [and] were engaged with the population they were serving, but they still were being discriminated against with racist jokes, racist comments.” Sam v. City of San Gabriel, BC684410 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Nov. 21, 2017).

In June, he reached a confidential settlement in a five-year-old case representing a Black supermarket employee terminated after 25 years when he rose to the position of store manager. “It’s fine while he’s an assistant manager or head cashier … but at the point where he becomes a manager, they find a way to get rid of him,” Alexander said. Lytle v. The Vons Companies Inc., BC631763 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Aug. 25, 2016).

— Don DeBenedictis