- Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- - SE HABLA ESPAÑOL
- Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- - SE HABLA ESPAÑOL
Sexual harassment on a Manhattan Beach job, with HR going quiet on the complaint or turning it back on you for filing. The firm files claims against the California employer that let it happen, and against the individual responsible.
NYU School of Law · Skadden and Latham defense training · Confidential consult · Fee only on recovery
Or call us directly
A worker in Manhattan Beach who reported sexual harassment and was answered with silence, discipline, or a managed-out exit has a claim under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. Under California law, the employer is liable from the moment it knew or should have known about the conduct and failed to correct it. Severance NDAs that try to silence harassment are void under California’s Silenced No More Act. Comments you were told to stop taking so seriously. A manager who ignored the word no. A schedule rewritten without explanation, a write-up that surfaced out of nowhere, a promotion quietly handed to a coworker who “played along.” DMs and group chats that crossed the line. California law backed you from the first incident, and the employer broke it. The practice takes on California employers that allow harassment to occur and then punish the people who report it. A successful claim recovers lost wages, compensation for the emotional cost, unpaid compensation, and attorneys’ fees billed to the employer rather than the worker. In the worst fact patterns, punitive damages on top. Founding Partner Simon Moshkovich, NYU Law and former Skadden and Latham & Watkins counsel, reads every Manhattan Beach intake personally. A strong case gets that read directly. So does a case that will not carry. When the file gets signed, the work goes toward winning it, not toward delivering a quick payoff to the employer.
Mercer Legal Group is a California plaintiff-side employment practice. Every client is a worker — there is no company-side work and there never has been. Simon Moshkovich, the founding partner, trained on the defense side at Skadden and at Latham & Watkins before opening the practice, and that background shapes how harassment files get assembled here. South Bay sexual-harassment matters need the kind of careful intake, evidence collection, and timeline work that volume shops skip. Manhattan Beach-area clients stay with a senior attorney from the first call through the close of the file — no junior handoff after the retainer is in.
FEHA — California’s civil rights statute for the workplace — recognizes two separate categories of sexual harassment, and a Manhattan Beach workplace is bound by both. Quid pro quo comes first. Someone with authority over your shift, your assignment, your commission, your closing team, or your schedule ties those outcomes to sexual conduct. Sleep with me and the promotion is yours. Refuse and the Saturday shift goes away. A single instance is enough to bring a claim. Hostile work environment is the second category. Unwanted comments, touching, staring, DMs, graphic references, locker-room talk, or conduct so persistent that a reasonable worker in your role cannot perform normally. The conduct does not have to come from the boss — a coworker, a regular customer at the restaurant, a vendor stopping by the office, a contractor on the property all count, and the employer remains responsible for how it responds. The conduct does not have to be explicitly sexual — harassment based on gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity sits inside FEHA the same way. The conduct does not have to take place on the premises — Slack, Teams, Instagram DMs, Zoom, client drinks, after-hours events at a beach house, group threads that branch off from work chats all qualify. California likewise does not require a textbook complainant or a particular form of words at the moment you want the conduct to stop. If you reported and the company offered nothing of substance in response — or worse, cut your hours, moved you to the least desirable shift, wrote you up, or began maneuvering you out — the claim runs against the company itself, not only the individual who did it.
A sexual harassment claim that lands against a Manhattan Beach or South Bay employer can recover the wages and benefits lost when the harassment itself or the retaliation that followed cost you hours, a position, or the job entirely. It can recover compensation for the emotional cost — usually the largest line item on a verdict like this, because Los Angeles County juries understand exactly what this conduct does to a person. Front pay applies when returning to that workplace, or that corner of the South Bay industry, is no longer realistic. Attorneys’ fees come from the employer under FEHA rather than out of the client’s award. Punitive damages are available when the conduct itself was severe enough, or when the company knew and chose to do nothing. The client owes nothing up front. Fees stay contingent on a recovery. Move on the file. California statutes are short — one year for some claims, three for FEHA after AB 9 — and once the deadline closes, facts that were once winnable cool. Phones get reset, the coworker you needed on record quits and stops returning calls, the witnesses who saw the conduct rotate off the account. If a severance or separation agreement landed in your hands carrying a non-disclosure or non-disparagement clause, do not sign before a review. The Silenced No More Act voids the portions of those NDAs that would silence harassment, discrimination, or retaliation. The transaction the employer expects to close is not the only one on the table. Past results carry no guarantee of future outcomes.
Confidential, no-cost case review for Manhattan Beach matters. A senior attorney delivers a direct read on the claim, the defenses the employer will reach for, and the realistic value of the file.
Settlements on Manhattan Beach sexual-harassment files are produced by the record this firm builds before the first demand letter ever leaves. Step one is preservation — texts, DMs, Slack, Teams, emails, voicemails, screenshots, Snap saves, witness contacts — captured while everything is still recoverable and before anything on the company side quietly disappears. A formal litigation-hold letter goes to the employer to keep HR and IT from clearing the accounts, and you get walked through locking down your own devices so nothing on your side ends up wiped either. The protective filing with the California Civil Rights Department or the EEOC goes in to freeze the deadlines. Once discovery opens, requests target the material a South Bay employer least wants outside its walls — the HR complaint file, prior complaints against the same manager or executive, exit interviews of the people who quit around that specific person, the investigation memo that climbed to the owner, the decision-maker emails about how to handle you. Depositions follow. Under oath, the version HR or the manager wrote into the file rarely survives being read back next to their own Slack threads. When the record lines up that way, the strong cases resolve on strong terms. When the employer refuses to be reasonable, the matter is built to be tried to a Los Angeles County jury.
Three things distinguish how this firm handles a Manhattan Beach harassment file. Simon Moshkovich reads every intake himself — no intake screener triaging by keyword, no paralegal working off a form. The docket is held to a level that keeps senior-attorney hours available for discovery, deposition prep, and mediation rather than chasing volume. The practice is workers-only — there is no Manhattan Beach restaurant group, boutique owner, South Bay finance office, or El Segundo creative shop the firm is quietly holding back on because they pay on another matter. Together, those three are the kind of representation a worker wants on the other side of the table once a sophisticated employer brings in defense counsel of its own.
A brief selection of California employment matters this firm has carried to resolution. Each Manhattan Beach-area or South Bay fact pattern turned on its own record — prior outcomes carry no forecast of how a new claim will resolve.
A worker reported sustained inappropriate conduct by a senior colleague. The internal complaints were documented but never acted on, and the worker was terminated under a pretextual performance rationale. The matter resolved at mediation with a confidential payment.
A mid-career professional was pressured by a direct supervisor in conduct documented across messaging platforms. Targeted discovery surfaced the records that drove the resolution, and the matter closed on confidential terms that included a full release of the non-disclosure provisions the employer had originally insisted on.
A senior worker at a Southern California logistics company was let go in the weeks after raising wage-and-hour issues through internal channels. The performance pretext the employer had on file did not survive its own HR records in discovery. The matter resolved confidentially in the seven figures, ahead of trial.
Call (818) 538-3458 or use the form on this page. Two or three sentences on what was said or done, who did it, when you raised it internally, and how the company responded is enough to get the call scheduled. The full detail fills in once you are on the phone.
Simon or a senior attorney walks the timeline with you in full. The conversation covers what FEHA actually reaches in your facts, the categories of evidence that move harassment verdicts, and what a Manhattan Beach file is realistically worth against the fact patterns the practice has handled before.
Once the firm takes the case, preservation begins immediately — texts, DMs, voicemails, and witness contacts all get locked into the file — along with specific instructions on what to report, what to stop routing through internal HR channels, and how to respond if the employer or its counsel reaches out. CRD or EEOC filings go in that same week whenever the statute is short.
Once the record is built out, the call is yours — settle or take it to a jury. Manhattan Beach harassment files resolve on serious numbers once the employer faces genuine exposure across documents and sworn testimony; the matters that go all the way to verdict are the ones where the company will not acknowledge what its own record plainly shows.
Confidential, no-cost review. Every Manhattan Beach sexual-harassment intake reaches Simon Moshkovich personally before any retainer is signed.
