Wins

Lloyd v. County of Los Angeles (2009) 172 Cal.App.4th 320 (California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Three) [partially published]. GMSR obtained a decision affirming summary judgment for the defendant County of Los Angeles. The plaintiff claimed that he had been laid off from his permanent position as a heat and frost insulator, rehired as a temporary employee to do the same job, and then fired because of his complaints about workplace safety in the presence of asbestos. In the published portion of the opinion, the Court of Appeal held that his claims were not barred by his failure to exhaust remedies under the County’s Civil Service Rules, or by his failure to exhaust remedies under the Labor Code, but that his common law claims were barred by Government Code section 815. In the unpublished portion of the opinion, the Court of Appeal held that, on the merits of the claims, the County had met its burden under various Labor Code provisions to establish legitimate reasons for its employment decisions and that the plaintiff had failed to raise a triable issue of fact as to whether its reasons were a pretext for retaliation.