- Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- - SE HABLA ESPAÑOL
- Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- - SE HABLA ESPAÑOL
Forced out of a Glendale job for raising a concern, requesting an accommodation, or refusing to participate in something unlawful? The firm pursues employers that retaliate, and turns down cases the documents will not carry.
NYU School of Law · Plaintiff-side employment counsel · Free initial review · No fee unless we recover
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Were you fired from a Glendale job under a story that does not match the timeline? Perhaps you reported harassment or discrimination. Perhaps you asked for a disability accommodation or pregnancy leave. Perhaps you refused to take part in something you knew was unlawful, or raised an internal concern the company wanted buried. If any of that lined up with the days before your termination, California law was on your side and the employer crossed it. Mercer Legal Group pursues those employers. Recoverable damages cover lost wages, the emotional harm a wrongful firing causes, attorneys’ fees billed against the employer rather than carved out of the verdict, and punitive damages where the conduct rose to malice or fraud. Simon Moshkovich — NYU Law, former Skadden and Latham — reads every Glendale intake personally. A merit case gets told straight. A weak one gets the same honesty the same day.
Mercer Legal Group is a California plaintiff-side employment firm. It accepts the cases the documents and witnesses will carry at trial, and declines the ones that will not — that read comes on the first call. Workers in Glendale and the wider Verdugo area work directly with the senior attorney who took the file, not associates rotated in mid-discovery. That structure is what produces settlements that actually pay.
California’s wrongful-termination law sits well above the federal floor. FEHA prohibits firing tied to age over 40, race, religion, national origin, gender, sex, pregnancy, disability, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, and marital or military status. Labor Code section 1102.5 protects workers who report conduct they reasonably believe violates the law, whether the report goes internally or to a regulator. CFRA covers protected leave for the worker’s own serious health condition or a qualifying family member, with the 2021 amendment extending coverage to employers with as few as five employees. A workers’ compensation claim cannot be the basis for a termination. What stays legal is firing for genuine performance or operational reasons, supported by documentation that pre-dates the protected activity. When a Glendale employer’s stated reason fails to align with the timeline or with the records that come out in discovery, that gap is the case.
A successful California wrongful-termination claim turns the harm into damages tracks the worker can actually collect. Back pay covers wages plus the full benefits package — health, dental, vision, retirement match, vested or near-vested equity, bonuses, commissions, and accrued PTO — running from the termination date through verdict or settlement. Front pay covers the future earnings a jury or arbitrator finds the firing destroyed. Emotional-distress damages are proven through credible testimony, not medical bills, although treatment records strengthen the number. Punitive damages apply where the employer acted with malice, oppression, or fraud, and California verdicts on these are not modest. FEHA cases shift attorneys’ fees and costs to the defendant on a plaintiff win, so the verdict stays with the worker. Workers in Glendale should move early — many retaliation theories carry one-year statutes, and a delayed filing narrows both the damages window and the available evidence.
Free, confidential review for workers in Glendale. The first call gives a straight read on whether the file has merit and the realistic damages range.
Strong settlements come out of cases the employer cannot afford to take to a jury. The firm’s job is to build that file before any negotiation opens. Step one is the litigation hold — a written preservation letter to the former employer locking down emails, instant-message threads, HR files, performance documentation, and management communications tied to the firing. Your own evidence comes in next: text threads with managers, calendar invites, performance reviews, anything in your possession that the employer would later prefer to recharacterize. Witnesses are identified early — coworkers, prior HR personnel, vendors who saw the dynamic — and their accounts captured while events are fresh. The deposition strategy targets the gap between what the employer’s documents actually show and what the stated reason for firing required.
Most plaintiff-side employment shops run on volume — hundreds of open files, rotating associates, settlement by spreadsheet. That model rewards the firm. It rewards less well the worker whose career and reputation are exposed. The firm runs the opposite design: a small active docket by choice, Simon Moshkovich reading every intake himself, and the same senior lawyer carrying the case from demand letter through deposition through trial if it gets there. No defense-side engagements on the books, so no quiet conflict with the Glendale-area employers the firm would otherwise need to sue. And a real filter at intake — when the firm says a case is worth bringing, the documents already meet the verdict bar.
A short selection of resolutions from California employment cases the firm has resolved. The facts of every Glendale-area matter are its own — prior outcomes carry no guarantee about a future case.
A worker was terminated within weeks of a documented internal harassment report against a direct supervisor. The performance rationale the company cited did not square with the prior twelve months of reviews on file. The case resolved at mediation with a confidential payment and clean separation language.
A senior team member at a Southern California operations company was fired shortly after escalating internal wage-and-hour concerns up the chain. The performance reason the employer offered did not appear in any prior review. After discovery turned the decision-makers’ own communications, the matter resolved confidentially in the seven figures before trial.
A technical staffer at a California manufacturer was let go in the weeks after escalating documented compliance concerns to management. Targeted discovery into the decision-making chain produced the records that drove the resolution. The matter settled on confidential terms.
Call (818) 538-3458 or send a note via the form. A short summary — when the termination came, what you had done in the weeks before, what HR’s stated reason was — is enough to set the call. The conversation is confidential either way.
Simon or a senior attorney works the timeline live and gives a direct answer: viable wrongful-termination case or not, the realistic damages range, and the defenses the employer is likely to mount. The cases that will not carry get that read up front.
If the file is viable, a written preservation memo goes out within days. When the deadline is close — and on most retaliation theories it is — the CRD or other agency filing goes in that week.
Once the record is built, the path is yours: accept the settlement the file will command, or take the matter to a jury. The firm’s work is what makes either route stand on the evidence.
Free review. Every Glendale intake reaches Simon Moshkovich personally before anyone is brought on as a client.
