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Fired or demoted while out on leave in Los Angeles or nearby? FMLA and CFRA protections don’t mean much until someone enforces them — that’s our work.
NYU Law · Former Skadden, Arps · Former Latham & Watkins · No-fee initial review · Plaintiff-side leave-retaliation counsel
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Did a Los Angeles employer fire you, write you up, or push you out after you took medical leave — or even just after you asked for it? Were you told there was “no leave available” for a serious condition you had every right to take time off for? Did your job disappear while you were out caring for a parent, recovering from surgery, or bonding with a new baby — then reappear, filled by someone else, when you got back? If any of that is what happened, California and federal law were on your side, and your employer broke it. We go after employers who interfere with protected leave or punish employees for taking it. You can recover your lost pay, money for the emotional toll, reinstatement if you want it, and attorneys’ fees — paid by them, not you. In serious cases, punitive damages on top. Simon Moshkovich — NYU Law, former Skadden and Latham — personally handles every intake. If your case has merit, we’ll tell you straight. If it doesn’t, we’ll tell you that too. When we take your case, we’re not here to settle cheap — we’re here to win it.
Mercer Legal Group is a California plaintiff-side employment practice. FMLA and CFRA leave-retaliation cases need careful timing analysis and a clear documentary record — they’re won or lost on the leave request, the medical certifications, and what changed in the employer’s behavior immediately after. Cases that clear our intake review get senior-attorney attention through resolution; Los Angeles-area clients hear a straight read on day one.
Federal law gives eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year. California law does the same — and in many cases goes further, covering smaller employers and a wider definition of family. You’re generally eligible if you’ve worked for your employer for at least a year, put in about 1,250 hours in the last 12 months, and the employer has enough employees within range (50 under federal law; just 5 under California). You can take that leave for your own serious health condition. To care for a spouse, domestic partner, child, parent, sibling, grandparent, or parent-in-law with a serious condition. For pregnancy, childbirth, or bonding with a new child. For qualifying military-family reasons. Your employer cannot legally refuse your leave if you qualify. They cannot fire you, demote you, cut your pay, or write you up for taking it. They cannot retaliate when you return. They cannot eliminate your position as a pretext to get rid of you while you’re out. They cannot pressure you to use your phone, answer emails, or “check in” during leave. And they cannot punish you just for asking about it. If any of that happened, that’s an interference or retaliation claim, and you can sue.
When you win a leave-related case, you can recover the wages and benefits you lost from the day your employer crossed the line through judgment. Money for future lost earnings if your career took a real hit. Liquidated damages equal to your lost wages — federal law doubles the recovery in many cases. Reinstatement to your job if that’s what you want, or front pay if it isn’t. Compensation for the emotional harm. Attorneys’ fees — paid by your former employer, not you. And punitive damages in some cases when the conduct was egregious enough. You don’t pay us out of pocket. We take these cases on contingency — you pay only if we win. Move now. California deadlines are strict — some claims run out in as little as a year, most within three. Federal leave claims have their own short clock. If you wait, the company’s leave paperwork, HR notes, timecards, and decision-maker emails quietly disappear, witnesses leave, and your leverage walks out the door. And if you’re sitting on a severance agreement — especially one handed to you right after leave — don’t sign before we talk. California’s Silenced No More law makes many of those NDAs unenforceable when retaliation is involved.
No-cost review for Los Angeles-area workers fired or demoted around FMLA or CFRA leave. Direct read on the retaliation claim and what it’s worth.
We don’t negotiate from hope. We negotiate from evidence. First, we preserve the record — your leave request forms, doctor’s notes, emails and texts with HR and your manager, Slack and Teams messages, performance reviews before and after leave, and witness accounts — before anything quietly disappears. Next, we file to protect your rights with the California Civil Rights Department, the EEOC, or the Department of Labor so your deadlines stop running. Once we’re in litigation, we pull the employer’s records: leave certifications, HR files, the decision-maker emails about your leave and return, your predecessor’s and replacement’s records, prior complaints against the same supervisor, and the company’s actual written leave policies compared to how they treated you. Then we depose the people who made the decision. Their story about why you specifically were let go, demoted, or passed over tends not to survive contact with their own internal paperwork. Strong cases settle on strong terms. When they don’t, we take them to a jury. Either way, the choice is yours, made from the position the work has already built — not from hope.
What gets us hired most often isn’t a billboard. It’s a referral from someone whose case got attention the first firm didn’t give it. Los Angeles employees tell us the same story: signed with a big plaintiff-side shop, got handed to whoever had capacity, and watched their case drift toward a quick settlement that benefited the firm more than them. We run the opposite playbook. Senior-attorney attention on every file. Tight caseload, so your case isn’t stacked behind two hundred others. Employees only, so there’s no hidden conflict with the companies we’d have to sue. And we pass on cases we don’t believe we can win — which is why, when we take yours, it means something.
Los Angeles County runs on industries where leave gets treated as an inconvenience. The pattern changes by sector, and so does the evidence a claim rests on.
Entertainment and production. Project-based work, long shoots, crews staffed per production. The usual dispute is whether the employer counted your hours correctly toward the 1,250-hour threshold, or whether a position quietly failed to exist when the leave ended.
Healthcare. Hospitals and clinics across the county run rotating shifts, and leave requests collide with scheduling. Denials here often surface as a shift pattern that changes right after the paperwork goes in.
Logistics and warehousing. The corridors around the ports, Vernon, Commerce and the eastern county. Attendance-point systems are the recurring problem: protected absences get counted as points, and the termination arrives looking automated rather than retaliatory.
Retail, restaurants and hospitality. Smaller headcounts, which is exactly where CFRA matters most. Many of these employers sit under the federal 50-employee threshold and assume no leave law applies to them. California’s five-employee threshold says otherwise.
Professional services and startups. Salaried roles where the retaliation is quieter: a reorganization on return, a reporting line moved, a role narrowed until leaving looks voluntary. Constructive discharge claims usually come from here.
Wherever you work in the county, the same evidence decides it: the leave dates, the discipline dates, and what the employer put in writing between the two.
A few resolutions from California employment matters we’ve handled. Every case is different — past results don’t guarantee future outcomes.
An employee’s role was materially changed during pregnancy leave and made untenable on return. After targeted discovery into the internal decision-making chain, the case settled on confidential terms.
A senior employee at a Southern California logistics operation was fired weeks after raising internal concerns about wage violations. In discovery, the employer’s performance-based excuse collapsed under its own HR records. The case settled confidentially in the seven figures before trial.
A healthcare professional requested intermittent leave for a serious medical condition and was written up for the first time in over a decade before being terminated. The case settled in mediation with a confidential payment and a negotiated exit.
Reach us at (818) 538-3458 or through the form. Tell us when the leave started, what you requested, and what changed when you returned (or tried to). A few sentences gets us going.
Simon or a senior attorney looks at the leave timeline against the adverse action — denial, demotion, termination — and tells you whether FMLA, CFRA, or both apply, what the available damages are, and where the case is likely to land.
If we represent you, the first move is preservation of every leave-related communication — request emails, doctor’s notes, HR responses, return-from-leave conversations — and a strategy on what to say if the employer keeps reaching out.
After the record is in place, you choose: settle on the leverage the leave-retaliation evidence gives you, or take it to a jury. Either way, the file we build is what makes the choice meaningful.
Retaliation is any adverse action taken because you used protected leave. Firing is the obvious one, but a write-up that appears three days after you file leave paperwork, a demotion on return, a shift change that makes the job unworkable, or being passed over for a promotion you were in line for all qualify. Federal FMLA and California’s CFRA both prohibit it. The question a case turns on is not whether the employer says the reason was performance. It is whether the record supports that story once the leave dates and the discipline dates are laid side by side.
FMLA claims carry a two-year statute of limitations, extended to three years where the violation was willful. CFRA runs through the Civil Rights Department: you have three years to file the administrative complaint, then one year from the right-to-sue notice to file in court. Most leave cases plead both. Waiting is the single most common way a strong case gets weaker, because personnel records get purged and the people who witnessed the conversation move on.
Only for a reason that has nothing to do with the leave. A layoff that would have hit your position anyway, a site closure, or documented misconduct that predates the leave can all survive scrutiny. What does not survive is a termination the employer cannot explain without referring to your absence. If you were let go during leave or in the first weeks after returning, the timing alone shifts the burden onto the employer to produce a clean, contemporaneous reason.
Check CFRA before assuming you have no claim. California’s law applies to employers with 5 or more employees, while federal FMLA requires 50 within a 75-mile radius. That gap catches a large share of Los Angeles workers, particularly at smaller offices, restaurants, clinics and startups. CFRA also covers more family relationships, including a grandparent, grandchild, sibling or designated person.
The timeline does most of the work. Leave request dates, medical certification dates, the first negative performance note, and the termination date, in order, on one page. Beyond that: your personnel file, how comparable employees who did not take leave were treated, and any inconsistency between what the employer told you, told the state, and put in writing. Preserve email and messages before you give notice or hand back a laptop, because access usually disappears the same day.
Free FMLA review. Simon personally screens every leave-retaliation case.
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