- 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 in Long Beach after a complaint, a leave request, or refusing to do something illegal? The firm represents California workers when a wrongful-termination claim needs a real result, not a quick payout.
NYU Law · Skadden & Latham alumni · Plaintiff-side employees only · Contingency, no win no fee
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Termination is rarely framed honestly by the employer. The HR letter calls it a “role elimination,” the manager mentions “performance,” and the timing happens to land right after a protected complaint, a medical leave request, or a refusal to look the other way. California law calls that wrongful termination, and the protections sit well above what federal law gives a worker. FEHA covers discrimination and retaliation firings with uncapped emotional-distress and punitive damages, and shifts attorneys’ fees to the employer on a plaintiff win. Labor Code section 1102.5 covers whistleblower retaliation with civil penalties up to ten thousand dollars per violation. CFRA and the Pregnancy Disability Leave Law cover leave-related firings. Public-policy wrongful termination covers cases the statutes do not name. The firm handles the full California termination file for clients in Long Beach, Lakewood, Signal Hill, Cerritos, and across the South Bay, and builds each case against the employer’s actual decision record — not the rationale assembled after the fact. Simon Moshkovich — NYU Law, former Skadden and Latham — reads every Long Beach intake himself.
Mercer Legal Group is a California-based employment law firm representing employees only, with no corporate-defense engagements on the books. The firm screens every termination matter against one question: do the documents and the timing support a verdict at trial? Cases that meet that bar draw a senior attorney for the full life of the file. Cases that do not get an honest “no” on the same day, with the reasoning in plain language. Intakes from Long Beach and the wider South Bay reach Simon Moshkovich directly, and stay with the senior attorneys who took them.
California protects workers against termination for reasons the rest of the country often allows. Race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy, age (40 and over), disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, and military or veteran status are all protected categories under FEHA. Firing in retaliation for a complaint about any of those — whether the complaint targeted the worker’s own treatment or a coworker’s — is wrongful termination. Whistleblower retaliation under Labor Code section 1102.5 covers internal reports, regulator complaints, and refusals to participate in conduct the worker reasonably believes is illegal. CFRA and the Pregnancy Disability Leave Law protect leave-takers against termination tied to the leave itself or to the request. Workers’ compensation filings, jury duty, voting leave, and military service all sit on the same protected list. What an employer can do is terminate for documented cause or as part of a real reduction in force. What it cannot do is dress retaliation up as either one — and around the Port and the Long Beach Airport corridor, late-arriving performance write-ups and unusually well-timed reorganizations turn up often enough that the firm has a playbook for them.
A successful wrongful-termination case turns the financial damage into a recoverable number. Back pay covers wages, commissions, bonuses, equity vesting, and benefits the worker would have earned from the termination date through judgment. Front pay covers future earnings when the firing measurably set the career back. FEHA emotional-distress damages run without a statutory cap and apply to discrimination, harassment, and retaliation firings. Punitive damages stack where the employer acted with malice, oppression, or fraud, and California juries are not shy about them. Section 1102.5 carries civil penalties on top of compensatory damages for whistleblower terminations. Attorneys’ fees and costs go to the employer on a plaintiff win — the worker keeps the verdict. Statutes of limitation matter. FEHA gives three years to file with the Civil Rights Department; section 1102.5 runs three years; common-law wrongful termination runs two; and Labor Code wage claims run three or four depending on the theory. Severance agreements with broad releases should not be signed before a legal call. California’s Silenced No More Act voids many such releases when harassment, discrimination, or retaliation underlie the separation.
Free, confidential intake. Every Long Beach termination matter reaches Simon Moshkovich, and the firm gives a same-day read on whether the case has a real path to a verdict.
Termination cases settle for real money when the employer has read the discovery and concluded a jury would side against it. The firm builds toward that conclusion from the first call. Preservation comes first: a written letter to the former employer locking down emails, Slack messages, Teams threads, calendar invites, performance reviews, HR ticket logs, payroll records, and decision-maker correspondence connected to the termination. The worker’s own copies — personal-account messages, downloaded reviews, contemporaneous notes — get pulled into the file the same week. Witnesses get identified before contact fades or memories blur. The deposition plan is built around the gaps the employer’s documents leave open: the manager who cannot explain why a performance review changed two weeks after a complaint, the HR partner who cannot reconcile a “role elimination” with the requisitions posted the next quarter, the executive whose calendar shows the termination decision happened before the documented business reason. Pre-suit demand goes out with the record attached. Most cases resolve once the exposure is no longer abstract. The cases that do not resolve proceed to suit with a file already built.
What gets the firm hired in Long Beach is rarely marketing — it is the referral from a worker whose case got the senior attention the first firm did not give it. The firm runs the opposite playbook from the volume shops. Senior-attorney attention on every file. A tight active caseload, so the case does not sit behind two hundred others. Employees only, so the conflict-check is short and there is no quiet alignment with the companies the firm would have to sue. And a real filter on the front end — when the firm takes a case, it is because the documents and the timing support the verdict, not because a retainer slot was open.
Recent California termination matters the firm has resolved. Each Long Beach-area case turns on its own facts and timing — prior outcomes do not guarantee future results.
A senior team lead at a Southern California logistics operation raised wage-and-hour concerns through internal channels and was terminated within weeks under a performance pretext. Discovery showed the supervisor’s review template had been edited after the complaint date. The case resolved confidentially in the seven figures before trial.
A technical specialist at a California manufacturer escalated documented compliance concerns to management and was terminated shortly afterward. Targeted discovery into the chain of approvals around the firing produced internal correspondence the employer had not expected to see in the record. The matter settled on confidential terms.
A worker reporting persistent harassment by a direct supervisor was terminated within weeks under a stated performance rationale that conflicted with every prior review in the personnel file. The case resolved in mediation with a confidential payment, a neutral reference, and clean separation terms.
Call (818) 538-3458 or use the contact form. A two- or three-sentence summary of what happened — the termination date, what came right before it, what the employer said the reason was — is enough to get on the calendar. Anything shared on the call is confidential whether or not the firm ends up representing you.
Simon or a senior attorney works through the facts on the call and gives a direct read: viable claim or not, the realistic damages range, the defense the employer is most likely to raise. No pitch. No retainer talk before the answer is on the table.
If the case is viable, a preservation memo goes out within days — what to save, what to stop doing, what to say (and not say) if HR contacts you. Where the shortest applicable deadline is close, the agency filing goes out the same week.
With the file built, the call is yours: accept the strongest settlement the case will support, or take it to verdict in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The firm’s role is to make sure either decision rests on the documents, not on pressure or a clock.
Free, confidential first call. Simon reads every Long Beach case summary before the firm says yes or no.
