Category: Daily News

Ramirez was employed by Visalia Unified School District (VUSD) for more than 20 years. She served as the local union chapter vice president and president between 2016 and 2018. In 2015, VUSD initiated termination proceedings against Ramirez. The parties settled the dispute the next year, and Ramirez agreed to transfer into a position with Visalia Charter Independent Study (VCIS). VCIS “operates traditional and online independent study programs” and “is a dependent charter school, meaning it is part of” VUSD.

In either December 2017 or January 2018, a parent complained a student was erroneously assessed an absence. The VCIS principal investigated the complaint, learned the parent was correct, and, when other attendance discrepancies were noticed, initiated a larger investigation. All told, Ramirez incorrectly entered attendance more than 100 times between September 2016 and January 2018, i.e., the entire period she was assigned to perform the task. Ramirez was placed on leave on January 22, 2018, pending further investigation.

Two weeks prior to Ramirez’s placement on leave, she attended a school board meeting and criticized district policy – and the superintendent – requiring certain employees to appear on school property to write “book reports.

The superintendent investigated “deeper” into Ramirez’s errors. This investigation concluded Ramirez “falsif[ied] school district records,” “created numerous transcript and system errors …. creating incorrect and false permanent academic records for students,” failed to implement policy on double-checking attendance, and misadvised ‘students and parents ….” The investigation placed VCIS’s potential liability for misreporting attendance to the state at nearly $750,000.

VUSD subsequently initiated termination charges against Ramirez. Ramirez contested the charges at a hearing provided by VUSD. Numerous witnesses. The hearing officer concluded all charges, except for falsifying records, were substantiated. About one week later, the VUSD school board voted to terminate Ramirez’s employment.

California School Employees Association (CSEA) filed an unfair practice charge with the Public Employment Relations Board (Board or PERB). The filing alleged Visalia Unified School District (VUSD) violated Government Code section 3543.5, subdivision (a), by firing an employee – a secretary and local union chapter president – “in retaliation for engaging in protected union activity.”

The Board, which has exclusive jurisdiction to adjudicate anti-union allegations brought by public employees against public employers, subsequently filed a formal complaint against VUSD. (See § 3541.5.) The formal complaint charged VUSD with violating section 3543 by terminating the employee for engaging in protected activity: serving as a union officer and advocating on the union’s behalf.

The matter proceeded to a formal hearing presided over by an administrative law judge. The same parties testified to the same general facts. Among other findings, the Board held VUSD failed to establish “it would have terminated Ramirez regardless of her protected activity because of her ongoing performance issues.” The Board recognized “concern with the impact of Ramirez’s errors on students [was] a legitimate one,” but believed that was pretextual.

The Court of Appeal concluded that the Board correctly interpreted the law, properly found an inference VUSD retaliated against the employee for her union activity, but erred in holding VUSD failed to prove its affirmative defense it would have terminated the employee for poor performance notwithstanding any protected activity in the published case of Visalia Unified School Dist. v. Pub. Employment Relations Bd. – F084032 (January 2023).

VUSD asserts on appeal the the Education Code hearing conclusively established sufficient cause to terminate Ramirez. Education Code section 45113, subdivision (b) provides that “the governing board’s determination of the sufficiency of the cause for disciplinary action shall be conclusive.” (See Board of Education v. Round Valley Teachers Ass’n (1996) 13 Cal.4th 269, 287 [“school board’s determination of sufficiency of cause for disciplinary action” is conclusive via statute].)

The Court of Appeal noted that there is no decisional law discussing the intersection between Education Code section 45113 and the Educational Employment Relations Act (EERA). Education Code section 45113 vests in school boards the power to determine cause. PERB is entitled to review facts and resolve disputes to determine whether retaliation has occurred, but when Education Code section 45113 applies, it cannot override a finding sufficient cause for discipline existed.

After reviewing the evidence provided by VUSD the Court of Appeal noted that “Ramirez’s errors, and their discovery, were entirely divorced from any union activity. Those errors were real, not fancied or imagined. The attendant investigation originated not in union activity but in a parent’s legitimate complaint.” And it went on to say that “Here, VUSD was legitimately concerned the state would close VCIS due to misreporting attendance. That is a disastrous consequence. Employers need not await disaster to abate catastrophe. (Social Services, supra, PERB Dec. No. 2624-S at. p. 8.) Potential liability and likely recurrence are sufficient to act.”

The Public Employment Relations Board published decision number 2806-E [46 PERC ¶ 115] was set aside. The Board was directed to modify the decision consistent with this opinion and dismiss the complaint issued against VUSD. (§ 3542, subd. (c).)

Former California plaintiffs’ personal injury lawyer Thomas Vincent Girardi has been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly embezzling more than $15 million from several of his legal clients, and has been just been declared competent to stand trial despite his claim of advanced dementia.

Girardi owned the downtown Los Angeles-based Girardi Keese law firm. He was once a powerful figure in California’s legal community until creditors forced his law firm into bankruptcy in December 2020.  Along the way he had at least two claims to fame: he played a key role in winning a $333 million settlement for residents of Hinkley, California, in their lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric, a case that later became the basis for the film “Erin Brockovich.” Decades later, he and his wife Erika Jayne were cast on the reality show “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”

Last year, a Chicago law firm accused star Erika Jayne of acting as a “frontwoman” for her then-husband, Girardi. The court filing called Girardi’s now-shuttered law firm “the largest criminal racketeering enterprise in the history of plaintiffs’ law.”

Girardi gave more than $1 million in gifts and payments to a state bar investigator and his wife, according to a corruption probe released by the State Bar of California. During a 16-month investigation, the State Bar team reviewed over 950,000 documents, issued 23 subpoenas, and interviewed, either voluntarily or under compulsion, 74 witnesses.

The report indicated that Girardi intentionally cultivated relationships at many levels in the State Bar to increase his influence in the agency. The report outlines several instances of past State Bar staff exercising poor judgment, ignoring or poorly handling conflicts of interest, and otherwise behaving unethically. None of the individuals identified as engaging in unethical conduct remain affiliated with or employed by the State Bar. Girardi was finally disbarred in 2022.

And late last month, a Los Angeles federal judge ruled that Girardi is competent enough to stand trial despite claims he suffers from late-onset Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The 52 page Order written by U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton was filed under seal until attorneys for both sides are able to decide whether any information – such as health records – should remain confidential. The Order was unsealed on January 5. The decision comes after the federal judge presided over a three-day hearing last year.

Girardi’s lawyers argued that he resides in a dementia ward because he has no short-term memory. They said he does not recognize them or remember the criminal case. They entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf last year due to competency concerns.

However, the Order noted that there “were no contemporaneous anecdotal reports (i.e., text messages, emails, letters) of Defendant’s alleged cognitive decline from 2017 through the end of 2020. The first of such anecdotal reports were made to Defendant’s lawyer and/or experts related to the conservatorship proceeding in 2021.” However a number of his acquaintances were interviewed and recalled a decline in his memory and performance after a motor vehicle accident and a subsequent fall both of which caused head injuries.

However there were many inconsistencies reviewed in the Order. For example the Judge noted that Girardi claimed difficulty remembering his wife of over 20 years, Erika, However the Order noted that during an interview with an evaluator he “refused to silence his cell phone, and took calls from his wife. Specifically, after having said earlier he did not remember having a third wife, he answered a phone call from the woman who had in fact been his third wife for twenty years, accurately remembering she was leaving for Spain on that day to film a television show and accurately identifying her as an ‘ex.’ “

Dr. Diana S. Goldstein, a psychologist retained by the Government, conducted a psychological and neurocognitive evaluation of Girardi on three consecutive days in late April 2023. Dr, Goldstein, said “Mr. Girardi’s clinical presentation is not one of severe amnesia, but in my opinion a deliberate attempt at deception, an intentional embellishment of mild cognitive impairment for secondary gain, in this particular matter, an adaptive attempt to avoid prosecution.” She opined that Girardi “meets both criteria of mental competency to stand trial.”

Dr. R. Ryan Darby, a neurologist with specialization in behavioral neurology and neuropsychiatry reviewed records and interviewed Girardi over the course of three days. Dr. Darby concluded that Girardi “is malingering or exaggerating the severity of his memory impairment.” And found his “patterns of confabulation to be atypical and non-credible.”

Dr. Darby went on to say Girardi’s decline in hygiene was noted to coincide with his forensic evaluations beginning in April 2023. Most notably, Defendant ‘began wearing the same burgundy sweater to all evaluations.  Dr. Darby found particularly probative the fact that, according to the assisted living staff, Girardi would search out the same clothes day after day. He explained that wearing the same clothes on successive days is found in “[p]atients with memory problems,” but that is because they simply “forget to change” clothes. Such patients typically “do not actively seek out dirty clothes to wear,” which tends to show intact memory rather than memory problems

The Order also noted that the “timing of Defendant’s reported symptoms is highly suspect. On November 21, 2020, Defendant moderated a panel and commented appropriately on the detailed presentations of four other successful trial lawyers. A mere three weeks later, on December 14, 2020, when Defendant was facing a civil contempt sanction and facing accusations that he unlawfully withheld settlement funds from his clients, the very first claim of ongoing mental impairment arose.”

The Judge concluded the timing of defendant’s reported symptoms and Multiple clinical observations by experts support a finding of partial malingering, and that he meets the competency criteria to stand trial.

Ariana Miles worked for Kirkland’s, a chain of home décor stores, from about February 2011 to July 2018. She alleges that Kirkland’s unlawfully required employees to (1) remain in the stores during their rest breaks, and (2) work off-the-clock by getting their bags checked after they had clocked out. Based on these two claims, Miles sought class certification for various subclasses for the class period from May 2014 to the present.

The district court denied class certification because it found that common issues failed to predominate over individual ones under Rule 23(b)(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for both the Rest Break and Bag Check Claims.

For the Rest Break Claim, the district court assumed in part that on-premises rest breaks do not automatically violate California law. It then held that in the “absence of evidence that Kirkland’s Stores’ rest period policy, as implemented class-wide, violates California law,” it “‘would have to conduct individualized inquiries’ into whether each Subclass member was denied a duty-free rest break while being required to stay on premises.”

And for the Bag Check Claim, the district court denied certification because “there is insufficient evidence to demonstrate a general practice across Kirkland’s Stores’ California facilities of unlawful bag checks that predominates over individualized inquiries.”

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s denial of class certification for the Rest Break Claim, affirmed the denial of certification for the Bag Check Claim in the published case of Miles v Kirkland’s Stores Inc., 22-55522 (January, 2024).

With regard to the Rest Break Claim, under California law, employers may not require employees to work during rest periods. Cal. Lab. Code § 226.7(b). California’s Supreme Court has interpreted Section 226.7(b) to mean that employers must “relinquish any control over how employees spend their break time.” Augustus v. ABM Sec. Servs., Inc., 385 P.3d 823, 826 (Cal. 2016) (citing Brinker Rest. Corp. v. Superior Court, 273 P.3d 513, 535-36 (Cal. 2012)).

With regard to the Bag Check Claim, under California law, employers must pay employees for all hours worked. Cal. Lab. Code § 1194(a).

Rule 23 requires the district court to engage in a rigorous analysis before certifying a class. Rule 23 is designed to promote efficiency and economy of litigation. “A party cannot plead or speculate her way to class certification. She must marshal facts showing, by a preponderance of the evidence, that class issues predominate.” She must “show that the common question relates to a central issue in her claim.”

For a wage and hour claim, an employer’s official policies are relevant to the Rule 23(b)(3) analysis,” but a district court abuses its discretion by “rely[ing] on such policies to the near exclusion of other relevant factors touching on predominance.”

Kirkland’s admitted that it had a “uniform employee handbook policy requiring employees to remain on premises during their 10-minute paid rest breaks until sometime in 2018.” But a company’s policy by itself – even if it remains constant during the class period – “is not an elixir that turns canned allegations in a complaint into a pot of class action gold.” Courts still need to look at evidence of whether the company consistently implemented and enforced the policy across all employees during the class period.

The district court, after examining declarations of nine employees, determined that it “would have to conduct individualized inquiries into whether each Subclass member was denied a duty-free rest break while being required to stay on premises.”

“But the district court appears to have misinterpreted those declarations. The declarations cited by the district court only discuss store conditions in 2021, not the entire class period from 2014 to the present. These declarations do not establish that Kirkland’s employees could have left the store premises for their rest breaks from 2014 to 2018.” And “Kirkland’s consistently enforced that policy across its stores from at least May 2014 to sometime in 2018.”

The 9th Circuit concluded that the district court erred in denying class certification of the Rest Break Claim, but that it properly denied certification of the Bag Check Claim. It remanded the case back to the district court to reassess the evidence and apply the remaining Rule 23 requirements to the Rest Break Claim, consistent with this opinion.

California is poised to protect people who work in poorly ventilated warehouses, steamy restaurant kitchens, and other indoor job sites where temperatures can soar to potentially dangerous levels. According to the report by KFF Health News, the state has had heat standards on the books for outdoor workers since 2005, and indoor workplaces are next.

If California adopts its proposal in the spring, businesses would be required to cool worksites below 87 degrees Fahrenheit when employees are present and below 82 degrees in places where workers wear protective clothing or are exposed to radiant heat, such as furnaces. If businesses are unable to lower the temperatures, they must provide workers with water, breaks, areas where they can cool down, cooling vests, or other means to keep employees from overheating.

Only two other states, Minnesota and Oregon, have adopted heat rules for indoor workers, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nationally, legislation has stalled in Congress, and even though the Biden administration has initiated the long process of establishing national heat standards for outdoor and indoor work, the rules are likely to take years to finalize.

Neither workers nor businesses are satisfied with the plan. Some businesses fear they won’t be able to meet the requirements, even with the flexibility the regulation offers. Workers argue buildings should be kept even cooler.

Although most instances of heat-related illness are relatively minor, severe cases can result in serious injuries and even fatalities. In California, 20 workers died from heat between 2010 and 2017, seven of them because of indoor heat, according to a 2021 study by the Rand Corp., which analyzed the state’s proposed indoor heat rules.

After a record-breaking heat wave in the Pacific Northwest in 2021, Oregon in 2022 adopted protections for indoor workers that trigger when temperatures hit 80 degrees. Minnesota’s threshold temperatures range from 77 degrees to 86 degrees, depending on the type of work. The sheer size of California’s workforce, estimated at about 18 million, could usher in changes for the rest of country, said Juanita Constible, senior climate and health advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

California regulators have crafted the indoor rules to complement the state’s protections for outdoor workers. Those say that when temperatures exceed 80 degrees, employers must provide shade and observe workers for signs of heat illness. At or above 95 degrees, they must come up with ways to prevent heat illness, such as reducing work hours or providing additional breaks.

The California Occupational Safety and Standards Board, which is charged with setting worker protections, is weighing the regulation that would require employers to cool their buildings with air conditioning, fans, misters, and other methods when the temperature or the heat index hits 82 or 87. Some employees would be exempt from the rule, including employees who work remotely and those involved in emergency operations.

On May 18, 2023, the Board held a Public Hearing to consider the addition of new section 3396 to the General Industry Safety Orders of title 8. The Board received oral and written comments on the proposed revisions. On August 4, 2023, another 15-Day Notice was issued. This second 15-Day Notice was a result of further comments from stakeholders and added Board staff consideration. The most recent comment period was closed on November 28, 2023.

The board is expected to vote on the rules in March, and they would take effect by this summer, board Chief Counsel Autumn Gonzalez said.

UCLA has acquired the former Westside Pavilion shopping mall, which the university will transform into the UCLA Research Park – bringing together scholars and industry experts from around the world to create a nexus for discovery and innovation that will benefit Southern California and beyond. The 700,000-square-foot property, located 2 miles south of the Westwood campus, will initially host two multidisciplinary research centers: the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy at UCLA and the UCLA Center for Quantum Science and Engineering.

The vast new space, which straddles the southeast and southwest corners of Pico Boulevard and is connected by an enclosed pedestrian bridge over Westwood Boulevard, features a broad metal and glass facade and open areas with 17-foot ceilings, panoramic windows and expansive atriums inside and out. In addition to research labs and offices, the property has the potential for additional uses, including classrooms, lecture halls and event venues.

A fixture of West Los Angeles since its opening in 1985, the Westside Pavilion quickly became a much-visited retail location and gathering spot and continued to evolve over the following three decades. At one time, the site featured a three-level bookstore and multiple movie theaters and appeared as a backdrop to numerous movies and TV shows. Over the past decade, it suffered from a decline alongside other indoor malls across the country, leaving storefronts largely empty.

The new UCLA Research Park is made possible in part by an intended $500 million investment, with $200 million already allocated, from the state of California to establish and fund the immunology and immunotherapy institute at UCLA. The institute is also supported by a group of founding donors from the biotechnology, academic, entrepreneurship and philanthropic communities led by Meyer Luskin, Dr. Gary Michelson, Dr. Eric Esrailian, Dr. Arie Belldegrun, Sean Parker and Michael Milken.

In addition, Google – which previously leased part of the property – helped enable and support UCLA’s acquisition. Favorable real estate market conditions helped create the historic opportunity for the university as well.

“The California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy has the potential to reshape the future of science and medicine,” said the institute’s founding donors. “We are proud to join UCLA, UC President Drake, Gov. Newsom and the state Legislature in helping make California a world leader in decoding the still-mysterious workings of the human immune system and translating breakthrough discoveries into lifesaving immunotherapies. Launching a research park that joins biosciences with quantum science and engineering – as well as other emerging technologies, like next-generation artificial intelligence – is a once-in-a-generation event, and we are honored to be a part of it all.”

The acquisition caps a multiyear effort by Dr. John Mazziotta, vice chancellor for health sciences and CEO of UCLA Health, to establish the institute at UCLA and provide it with leading-edge facilities.

“UCLA’s goal is to build the immunology equivalent of Silicon Valley in Los Angeles,” said Mazziotta. “Given the university’s expertise and state-of-the-art facilities, we are expecting to attract the world’s best scientists in immunology and immunotherapy, as well as top students.”

The institute will draw on the expertise of UCLA faculty members, scholars from different higher education institutions, and other leading scientists and practitioners in clinical and biomedical scientific research, including human genetics, genomics, computer science, engineering and information science. Researchers will pursue new tools, treatments and vaccines for cancer, autoimmune and immune deficiency disorders, infectious diseases, allergies, heart conditions, solid organ transplantation and other major health-related issues.

The UCLA Research Park will also be home to the UCLA Center for Quantum Science and Engineering, which conducts research in the emerging field of quantum science and technology – including quantum computing, communication and sensing – with the aim of dramatically increasing information processing power by harnessing the unusual behavior of subatomic particles.

This latest major acquisition – UCLA’s third in the past 15 months – is part of a transformative expansion designed to broadly extend UCLA’s top-flight resources and institutional expertise, deepen the campus’ connections to Los Angeles’ diverse and dynamic communities, and meet the growing demand for top-tier higher education across the city and region. Each acquisition has been an adaptive and sustainable development, repurposing existing structures for new uses while avoiding the need for major construction.

In June of this year, UCLA bridged the gap between Westwood and downtown Los Angeles with its purchase of UCLA Downtown, a 334,000-square-foot building in downtown’s Historic Core.

And in September 2022, the university acquired its UCLA South Bay campus, including the 24.5 acres of the former Marymount California University campus in Rancho Palos Verdes and an 11-acre residential site in San Pedro — allowing UCLA to expand its offerings, serve more students and advance the University of California’s 2030 systemwide goals.