California Employment Law Help

Four months after attorneys settled a sexual harassment lawsuit against Franklin County and its former top building official, the payout amount remains secret. No records of the amount were filed in court. No records of the amount are in the possession of Franklin County, according to its contracted lawyer. The county’s private risk pool insurer, which is tasked with writing the check for Franklin in such cases, isn’t subject to state open records laws.

The full House passed Friday the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal Act (FAIR) Act, HR 1423, to end forced arbitration. The bill, which passed by a 225186 vote, prohibits predispute arbitration agreements that require arbitration of future employment, consumer, antitrust or civil rights disputes, as well as allows individuals, workers and small businesses to bring joint, class or collective action in these disputes.

The National Rifle Association over the past two years has grappled with two separate sexual harassment allegations against Josh Powell, a senior official, including a case involving an employee. The employee’s complaint was settled in 2017 using the nonprofit’s funds, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Earlier that year, Wayne LaPierre, the organization’s leader, had promoted Powell to executive director of general operations.

Every year hundreds of workers who file sex-discrimination grievances in U.K. courts settle their cases in return for moneyand silence. Now, you can see who’s been sued, and how many of those suits vanished before any alleged bad behavior could be publicly exposed in court. A relatively new and little-known public database analyzed by Bloomberg shows that 2,195 sex-discrimination suits were dropped before court rulings in the past 2 1/2 years, out of 3,585 suits in total.

Fourteen women who were allegedly assaulted by their Lyft drivers sued the San Francisco-based ride-service company Wednesday. They allege Lyft is acting negligently by not doing enough to prevent assaults by its drivers and not cooperating with law enforcement. The lawsuit argues Lyft does this because it has a financial incentive to recruit as many drivers as possible. "They knew about this issue but they've done nothing about it," said attorney Steve Estey, who represents the 14 women. "Instead you'll see they're focusing on increasing their market share, which just exposes more women to being sexually assaulted."