Elena R. Baca

Elena R. Baca

LOS ANGELES - Elena R. Baca leads her firm’s 76-lawyer global employment law department. As a respected trial lawyer, she has represented major entertainment companies, financial institutions, consumer brands, manufacturers, technology companies and utilities.

She also advises those clients on employment-related issues. For instance, earlier in the pandemic, she was retained as the nationwide lead counsel for a major food producer’s COVID-19 task force to guide the company on employment and safety issues for its 40,000-plus employees.

Baca is scheduled to go to trial in September in an unusual case against PG&E brought by a lineman who was fired, according to the company, for falsifying his time records. He claims he was fired for blowing the whistle on dangerous equipment. But the trial may also delve into allegations of a defamatory movie treatment he sent to studios and his own defamation claims against the utility. Hearn v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., 20CV0003931 (Napa Super. Ct., filed Nov. 22, 2021).

“That will be fun to talk about when it’s done,” she said.

The matter that has kept her especially busy over the last year or more is defending video game industry leader Activision Blizzard against sexual harassment charges brought by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The company and the agency entered into a consent decree last fall.

The problem, she said, is that California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing has abandoned its previous support for the EEOC’s deal and instead asked the Ninth Circuit to block it. EEOC v. Activision Blizzard Inc., 22- 55060 (9th Cir., filed Jan. 10, 2022).

The DFEH complains that women who accept the deal will have to sign releases that will prohibit them from participating in the department’s own suit against the company.

Baca and her firm characterize the department’s move as an unprecedented inter-agency conflict. “Here you had an agreement that the state would leave the federal government… to handle the harassment claims” against Activision, while the state still could press other gender discrimination claims.

Then, “the state decided pre-emptively to interfere, frankly,” she said.

“It’ll be really interesting to see how the state argues that it, rather than individuals who claim to have had workplace injuries, has the right to [pursue] those claims, not the individuals.”

-Don DeBenedictis