California Employment Lawyer Blog
Our civil justice system is about providing Plaintiff or the party who brings an action or lawsuit with remedies. These remedies can either be in the form of damages or what are called injunctive remedies. Damage generally refers to monetary awards, while injunctive relief can be an order from the court to the defendants to do or refrain from doing something specific.
In a typical employment case the employee or plaintiff will sue the employer for damages. Damages that an ex-employee/plaintiff is entitled to are: past wages, future loss of wages, damages for emotional distress, interest on the losses, punitive damages and payment of plaintiff’s attorney’s fees. Should the terminated employee find a job or be offered his/her old job back by the employer then his or her loss of wages claims is limited to the sum he/she lost before the offer or finding of the new job. Emotional distress is a tricky scenario which involves evaluating many factors before a dollar figure can be assigned to a plaintiff’s losses. Of course, many defendants will try to make a big deal out of the fact that the Plaintiff may not have sought professional help or has not taken any medications. An experienced employment and discrimination attorney however, should be able to counter these points and recover a fair sum if the client has suffered emotional suffering. Finally, punitive damages will be awarded based on how egregious defendant’s conduct has been and how rich defendant is. There are many cases which direct the trial court to limit the amount of punitive damages.
Our civil justice system is about providing Plaintiff or the party who brings an action or lawsuit with remedies. These remedies can either be in the form of damages or what are called injunctive remedies. Damage generally refers to monetary awards, while injunctive relief can be an order from the court to the defendants to do or refrain from doing something specific.
In a typical employment case the employee or plaintiff will sue the employer for damages. Damages that an ex-employee/plaintiff is entitled to are: past wages, future loss of wages, damages for emotional distress, interest on the losses, punitive damages and payment of plaintiff’s attorney’s fees. Should the terminated employee find a job or be offered his/her old job back by the employer then his or her loss of wages claims is limited to the sum he/she lost before the offer or finding of the new job. Emotional distress is a tricky scenario which involves evaluating many factors before a dollar figure can be assigned to a plaintiff’s losses. Of course, many defendants will try to make a big deal out of the fact that the Plaintiff may not have sought professional help or has not taken any medications. An experienced employment and discrimination attorney however, should be able to counter these points and recover a fair sum if the client has suffered emotional suffering. Finally, punitive damages will be awarded based on how egregious defendant’s conduct has been and how rich defendant is. There are many cases which direct the trial court to limit the amount of punitive damages.
In short what a case is worth depends on : how much money Plaintiff has lost, how much he/she will loses in the future and what his/her emotional sufferings have been.