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California Labor Code §98.6 makes it illegal for an employer to retaliate against any employee who asserts rights protected by the Labor Code — including the right to a 30-minute meal break and a 10-minute rest break. If you were terminated, demoted, written up, had your hours cut, or were pushed out after raising break-related concerns, the wage-and-hour rule your employer broke is the predicate. The real claim is retaliation. Mercer Legal Group, headquartered in Los Angeles, California, represents California employees in §98.6, §1102.5, and Tameny wrongful-termination cases tied to the assertion of break rights.
Retaliation under §98.6 covers any adverse employment action taken because the employee did something the Labor Code protects. For break rights, the protected activity usually looks like one of these:
The adverse action is the second half. Termination is the most obvious. So are demotion, pay cuts, schedule reductions, write-ups based on pretextual reasons, hostile treatment from a supervisor that materially changes the work environment, and constructive discharge — when the employer makes job conditions intolerable until the worker quits.
The two events together — protected activity, then adverse action close enough in time to draw a causal inference — are what move a case from “wage-and-hour dispute” to “retaliation case under §98.6.”
A break-rights retaliation case can rest on more than one cause of action. Which one applies depends on what you did and how the employer responded.
Labor Code §98.6 is the direct statute. It bars retaliation against an employee for asserting rights under the Labor Code, filing a wage claim, or testifying in a Labor Commissioner proceeding. Remedies include reinstatement, lost wages, and a $10,000 civil penalty per violation paid to the affected employee.
Labor Code §1102.5 is the whistleblower statute. If you reported a break-law violation to a government agency, to law enforcement, or internally to a supervisor or manager, §1102.5 applies. It carries a three-year statute of limitations under AB 1947 and allows recovery of lost wages, benefits, attorney’s fees, and a $10,000 per-violation penalty.
The Tameny claim — wrongful termination in violation of public policy, named after Tameny v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (1980) 27 Cal.3d 167 — is a common-law tort. It applies when the firing was tied to a fundamental public policy, and California’s wage-and-hour protections qualify. Tameny opens the door to emotional distress damages and, where the conduct was malicious or oppressive, punitive damages under Civil Code §3294.
Government Code §12940(h) comes in if the retaliation was tied to a protected category — for example, where break-rights complaints were used as cover for discrimination based on race, gender, age, or disability. FEHA covers retaliation for opposing discriminatory practices.
Most break-rights retaliation cases plead two or three of these in the alternative. The combination is what drives the damages model.
The damages in a retaliation case look nothing like the damages in a direct wage-and-hour case. A break-violation claim recovers premium pay — one hour of pay for each missed break. A retaliation claim built on the same underlying conduct can recover:
A wage-claim plaintiff who lost a $30 meal premium recovers $30 plus interest. A retaliation plaintiff who was fired over the same complaint can recover months or years of compensation, plus emotional distress, plus potentially punitives. The cause of action drives the math.
The patterns repeat across industries. A worker raises a break concern, and one of these follows:
If any of these followed a break-related complaint, the timing matters. California courts look at temporal proximity as evidence of causation. The closer the adverse action follows the protected activity, the stronger the inference.
employment
Personal Injury
A direct break-violation case turns on time records — when breaks were taken, when they were not, what the premium-pay calculation should be. A retaliation case turns on the link between what you said and what your employer did.
The evidence we build looks like:
The break violation itself becomes background. We have to prove it happened — that the worker had a good-faith basis to complain — but we are not trying to recover the missed-break premium. We are proving the complaint was the cause of the firing.
Mercer Legal Group is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The firm’s practice is built around employees who were fired, demoted, or pushed out for asserting workplace rights — retaliation, wrongful termination, harassment, and discrimination. We do not represent workers in pure wage-and-hour recovery actions; firms that specialize in PAGA-style wage class actions handle those claims differently.
What we do is take the conduct that drove an employer to retaliate — including denied breaks, unpaid overtime, misclassification disputes, and commission disputes — and prosecute the retaliation that followed. Our managing attorney, Simon Moshkovich, has tried California employment cases to verdict and represents workers across Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and the broader Southern California region.
Our attorneys work each retaliation case from intake through resolution. We identify the protected activity, document the adverse action, build the causal link, and prepare the case for either negotiation or trial — whichever the employer’s response makes necessary.
Most retaliation matters resolve through mediation or pre-litigation settlement once the case is fully worked up. The cases that do not resolve get tried. Trial readiness is part of what drives settlement in the cases that resolve.
Step 1. Call 213-985-3909 to schedule a free intake call. We listen first, identify protected activity and adverse action, and assess the timeline.
Step 2. We collect documents — pay stubs, time records, emails about the complaint, the termination paperwork, and your personnel file (which you have a statutory right to under Labor Code §1198.5).
Step 3. We work up the case. That means interviewing witnesses, preserving evidence, retaining experts where needed (HR practice experts, economic-loss experts, mental-health treaters where emotional distress is a major component), and serving demand letters or filing the complaint.
Step 4. We negotiate. Most retaliation cases resolve through mediation or pre-litigation settlement. We come to those conversations with the case already worked up, which sets the negotiating floor.
Step 5. If the employer will not settle for what the case is worth, we try it. Simon Moshkovich has tried employment cases in state and federal court.
The clock depends on which statute you plead. §1102.5 whistleblower retaliation has a three-year statute of limitations from the adverse action under AB 1947. A Tameny common-law wrongful-termination claim has a two-year limit under the personal-injury statute. A FEHA retaliation claim requires filing with the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) within three years, then suing within one year of the right-to-sue notice. Most workers do not need to choose at the start — we evaluate the timing of each potential claim during intake.
It can be. California courts treat temporal proximity — the gap between protected activity and the adverse action — as circumstantial evidence of causation. A two-week gap is short enough to support an inference of retaliation. The next question is whether the performance reasons hold up: were they documented before the complaint, do they apply to other workers, and does the personnel file support them? If the performance story was assembled only after the complaint, that can support a pretext argument and strengthen a retaliation claim.
Yes. Section 98.6 protects internal complaints — telling a supervisor, raising the issue in a team meeting, or putting it in an email or HR portal — as well as formal Labor Commissioner filings. Section 1102.5 can also protect certain internal reports to supervisors or managers when the employee reports a suspected legal violation. A formal agency complaint is not required for the protection to attach.
Sometimes. A claim does not require termination if there has been another materially adverse action — demotion, pay cut, schedule reduction, or hostile work conditions amounting to constructive discharge. The harder cases are where the conduct is short of a defined adverse action — colder treatment, exclusion from meetings, removal from email threads — because California law requires the change to be material. We evaluate borderline situations during intake and tell you honestly whether the conduct rises to actionable.
Section 98.6 protects the assertion of a right, not just the filing of a formal complaint, so the standard is broader than people expect. Asking for a break, telling a co-worker that a break was missed (covered by §232.5), refusing to skip a break, or cooperating with a Labor Commissioner investigation all count as protected activity. The employer’s argument that the report was informal is usually a sign they are looking for pretext to defeat the retaliation case. We have evidence patterns for exactly that defense.
