- Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- - SE HABLA ESPAÑOL
- Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- - SE HABLA ESPAÑOL
Fired from a job in Studio City or nearby after speaking up, taking leave, or flagging misconduct? We represent California employees in termination cases — and only the cases we’re prepared to try.
NYU School of Law · Skadden, Arps & Latham & Watkins alumni · Free Studio City-area consultation · No fee unless we win
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Were you fired from a job in Studio City or nearby for a reason that doesn’t sit right? Maybe you reported harassment or discrimination. Maybe you asked for medical leave or a disability accommodation. Maybe you refused to do something you knew was illegal, or spoke up about something the company wanted kept quiet. If any of that was the real reason you were let go, California law was on your side, and your employer broke it. We go after employers who cross the line. The law allows you to pursue lost pay, money for the emotional toll, and attorneys’ fees paid by the employer rather than by 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 prepare it for trial and negotiate from there.
Mercer Legal Group is a plaintiff-side California employment practice. Every client is an employee — we do not defend companies. Founding Partner Simon Moshkovich runs Studio City-area intakes personally and stays on the case through resolution. The work is not handed to a junior associate after the retainer is signed. The caseload is intentionally small so that each matter gets full senior-attorney attention through preservation, discovery, depositions, settlement negotiations, and trial when it goes that far.
California sets a higher bar on employee terminations than almost any other state, and Studio City employers operate under those same rules. FEHA prohibits firing tied to race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital or military status, age over 40, disability, medical condition, genetic information, or pregnancy. The Labor Code protects you when you report safety violations, file a workers’ comp claim, refuse to cover up illegal conduct, or testify in a government investigation. CFRA protects medical and family leave. Whistleblower retaliation is its own statutory claim under Labor Code 1102.5, with a separate damages structure. The throughline: any time the firing actually traces back to a protected characteristic or a protected activity — even if the company writes down ‘performance’ or ‘reorganization’ — it is wrongful termination, and California gives you a path to court.
The recoverable damages in a successful California wrongful-termination case are some of the broadest in the country. Back pay covers the wages, commissions, bonuses, equity, and benefits you lost from your termination date through judgment. Front pay covers the future lost earnings when the firing measurably damaged your career path. Emotional distress damages are uncapped under state law and don’t require a treatment record, though one strengthens the number. Punitive damages apply when the employer’s conduct was malicious, fraudulent, or oppressive — California juries award them in the right cases. FEHA shifts attorney’s fees to the defendant when the plaintiff wins, which means a successful case doesn’t reduce your recovery. The cases are taken on contingency: you pay nothing unless we win. Statutes of limitation are short — some claims run out at one year. Severance offers with non-disclosure clauses should not be signed until the case is reviewed: California’s Silenced No More Act voids most NDAs that would prevent reporting harassment, discrimination, or retaliation.
Free Studio City-area case review. A senior attorney will give you a direct, honest read on the evidence, the defenses to expect, and what the case is realistically worth.
Strong settlements come from cases the employer is not willing to put in front of a jury. Building that case starts the day we sign you. The first step is preservation: a formal litigation hold to your former employer requiring them to retain emails, Slack and Teams messages, HR files, performance documents, and management communications connected to your termination. We collect your own records: text threads with managers, calendar invites, performance reviews, and anything you have access to that the employer would prefer to recharacterize. Witnesses get identified early — coworkers, former HR, vendors who saw the dynamic — and what they recall gets documented while their memory is fresh. We file with CRD, the EEOC, or the Labor Commissioner where statutes are short. In litigation, we subpoena what the employer most wants left alone: HR files, decision-maker email chains, prior complaints against the same supervisor, and the policy-vs-practice gap. Depositions are built around contradictions in the employer’s own documents. Most cases settle on serious terms when that record lines up; the rest we try.
A lot of Studio City employees call us after a bad experience with a volume plaintiff-side firm. Case handed to a new associate. Calls ignored. Pressure to take a quick settlement that felt more about the firm’s workload than the client’s case. We work the opposite way. Simon Moshkovich reviews every intake himself, with no gatekeeper and no paralegal sorting by keyword. We keep the caseload small on purpose, so you get senior-attorney attention at every stage. We represent employees only, which means we’re never conflicted out by quietly representing the same companies we’d have to sue. And we turn down cases where the evidence isn’t there. So when we take yours, we mean it.
A short list of California employment-case resolutions from the firm. The facts on each Studio City-area matter were specific to that file — prior outcomes do not predict the result in any new case.
An employee was terminated within weeks of reporting harassment by a direct supervisor. The employer’s stated performance reason was not supported by the employee’s prior reviews. The case resolved in mediation with a confidential payment and clean separation 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 technical employee at a California manufacturer was fired after raising documented compliance concerns to management. After targeted discovery into the decision-making chain, the case settled on confidential terms.
Reach us at (818) 538-3458 or through the form. Two or three sentences about what happened is enough to get on the calendar. Confidentiality applies from the first message regardless of whether we end up representing you.
Simon or a senior attorney works through the timeline with you and gives a clear read: do you have a viable claim, what damages range fits, what defenses to expect from the employer. Honest answer, no pitch.
If the case is viable, we send you a written outline of what to preserve, what to stop doing, and what to say if HR or a manager reaches out. When statutes are close, we file with CRD or the appropriate agency the same week to lock the deadlines.
Once the file is built, the choice is yours: settle on the leverage the case has produced, or take it through trial. Our job is to make sure either path is a real option, supported by documents and witness statements rather than by pressure.
Free case look. Simon reviews every Studio City-area intake himself before we take it.
