- Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- - SE HABLA ESPAÑOL
- Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- - SE HABLA ESPAÑOL
Let go from an Irvine-area job in the weeks after raising a pay concern, filing an internal complaint, or requesting a workplace accommodation? The firm represents workers only — the management side of the docket goes elsewhere.
NYU Law & NYU Stern · Former Skadden & Latham · No-cost first call · Contingency-fee employment counsel
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Did the reason given for your Irvine termination land thinner than the timeline behind it? The trigger is often a harassment or discrimination report, an accommodation request, a medical leave filing, or a refusal to do something the company knew crossed a legal line. When the dates line up that way, the firing usually crossed a California statute, and the employer’s own records will show it. The firm builds those cases for verdict and resolves them on terms the file actually supports. Recovery typically includes lost pay, emotional-harm damages, attorneys’ fees billed against the employer rather than carved out of the worker’s award, and punitive damages where the conduct rose to malice or fraud. Simon Moshkovich — NYU Law, former Skadden and Latham & Watkins — reviews every Irvine intake personally and gives a direct read on the same call. The honest no on cases that will not carry is the same as the honest yes on cases that will.
Mercer Legal Group was built around a narrow proposition for Orange County employment work: a deliberately small docket, plaintiff-only, with every file prepared as if a jury will hear it produces better outcomes than a high-volume operation chasing settlement velocity. That model drives the practice in Irvine and across the firm. The work is workers-only — no employer-side engagements, no quiet conflicts with the OC tech, healthcare, or biotech companies on the other side of these cases. Simon Moshkovich reads every intake himself, and the cases are built with the same discovery and deposition discipline he ran on the defense side at Skadden and at Latham & Watkins, now applied for the worker.
California’s wrongful-termination protections are the strongest in the country, and OC employers run their HR functions accordingly — which is why Irvine firings tend to arrive better-papered than what the firm sees elsewhere. FEHA bars termination tied to age over 40, race, religion, gender, pregnancy, disability, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, military service, or marital status, and AB 9 extends the filing window for FEHA claims to three years under Government Code 12960. Labor Code 1102.5 covers whistleblower retaliation. CFRA covers protected medical leave for the worker or a covered family member. A real layoff or a documented just-cause termination is lawful. What is not lawful is dressing up a retaliatory firing with a performance improvement plan that materialized after the protected activity, and an Irvine timeline pulled in discovery makes that sequence very hard for the employer to explain.
A California wrongful-termination recovery sorts into a short list of categories, and OC juries have been steady on each one. Back pay covers lost wages, commissions, incentive comp, equity vesting, 401(k) contributions, and the cost of replaced benefits from the termination date through verdict. Front pay addresses the projected career damage when the firing genuinely set the worker back. Emotional-distress damages run under both FEHA and tort theories, with no California cap comparable to the federal one. Punitive damages reach employer conduct that was malicious, fraudulent, or oppressive. A FEHA plaintiff win shifts attorneys’ fees to the defendant. Filing windows for Irvine claims range from one to four years depending on the theory, with FEHA itself sitting at three under AB 9, and missing the shortest applicable clock can take an otherwise winnable case off the board.
No-cost case review for workers in the Irvine area. Direct read on whether the wrongful-termination claim has a credible path to verdict in front of an OC jury.
OC juries pay close attention to employment cases when the file is prepared properly. The work that drives a real settlement number happens long before any negotiation — it starts the week the case is signed. The first move is a litigation hold to the former employer demanding preservation of every email, Slack thread, Teams chat, HR file, performance record, and management communication touching the termination. The worker’s own records get collected at the same time: texts, prior reviews, calendar entries, anything still in their possession. Witnesses get identified and statements captured while recollections remain current. The deposition strategy is built around the contradictions the employer’s own paper will produce against the story counsel intends to tell — the kind of gap that makes a verdict in Santa Ana more frightening to defense counsel than writing a check.
The firm rarely gets hired off advertising. It gets hired through a referral from someone whose case finally got attention after the first firm did not give it any. Workers in Irvine tend to describe the same pattern: signed with a high-volume plaintiff shop, reassigned to whichever associate had open capacity, and watched the file drift toward a quick payment that served the firm more than the worker. The model here runs the other direction. Senior-attorney work on every active file. A deliberately tight docket, so the case is not buried behind two hundred others. No defense engagements that would create a quiet conflict with the OC tech and healthcare employers the firm has to sue. And a real filter at intake: more cases declined than accepted, so a yes carries weight.
A short selection of California employment matters the firm has carried to resolution. Every Orange County file has its own facts and procedural posture — prior results carry no promise about how any future Irvine matter will resolve.
A worker was terminated weeks after lodging an internal complaint about harassment by a direct supervisor. The performance basis the company put forward did not appear in the prior twelve months of reviews. The matter resolved at mediation with a confidential payment and clean separation language.
A senior team lead at a Southern California logistics company was let go weeks after escalating wage-and-hour concerns through internal channels. The performance pretext the company offered did not survive its own HR documentation in discovery. The matter resolved confidentially in the seven figures, pre-trial.
A technical specialist at a California manufacturer was terminated after escalating documented compliance issues up the chain. Targeted discovery into the decision-makers’ communications produced the records that drove the resolution, and the matter closed on confidential terms.
Reach the firm at (818) 538-3458 or via the contact form. A few sentences — your role, the termination, the protected activity that preceded it — is enough to set the call. The conversation is confidential from first contact.
Simon or a senior attorney runs the facts with you on the call and delivers a direct read: viable claim or not, the realistic damages range, the defenses OC employers will reach for. A conversation, not a sales pitch.
On a viable case, a written preservation memo goes out the same week — email, Slack and Teams threads, performance documents, witness identities. When the statutory deadline is short, the agency filing goes in immediately.
Once the record is built out, the call belongs to the worker: settle on the leverage the file actually produces, or take the matter to verdict. The firm’s job is to make sure both options sit on evidence rather than on pressure.
No-cost case review. Every Orange County intake reaches Simon Moshkovich or a senior partner before a retainer is signed.
