Genie A. Harrison

Plaintiff’s Employment Litigation, Sexual Harassment & Discrimination

At the end of this month, Harrison expects to secure preliminary approval of the largest pretrial equal-pay class action settlement in history, $100 million for women who work or did work for video game company Riot Games, Inc. McCracken v. Riot Games Inc., 18STCV03957 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Nov. 6, 2018).

In addition to the substantial damages it will pay the approximately 2,365 women in the class, Riot Games, maker of the highly popular multiplayer online video game “League of Legends,” has agreed to make major changes to its toxic “bro culture” work environment, including funding diversity, equity and inclusion programs and bringing in outside experts to analyze and monitor its performance. “It’s quite impactful,” Harrison said of the deal.

“I’m hopeful the settlement… is a message in the community that women must be paid fairly, and that employers have to implement structural reforms to ensure that women are paid fairly,” she said.

Harrison, the immediate past president of the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles, is passionate about ensuring equal pay for women. To that end, she brought several of her Riot Games clients to Sacramento to testify in favor of the proposed Pay Transparency for Pay Equity Act, SB 1162, by State Sen. Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) that would require employers to notify current employees seeking a new job within the company of the position’s pay scale.

“The failure to pay women what they deserve has a profound and lasting impact on women’s lives. It’s unfair and, in my mind, it truly is the corporation making a profit by stealing” from their female employees, Harrison said. “And it just has to stop.”

In August, she will represent a victim of a piano teacher who was sentenced last month to 100 years in prison for molesting his students. Jane Doe v. Coast Music Service Inc., 30-2015- 00802404 (O.C. Super. Ct., filed Aug. 4, 2015). The civil case was stayed for the criminal case.

– Don DeBenedictis