The Employee Handbook - An HR Podcast by 2 Lawyers
"The Employee Handbook - An HR Podcast", hosted by attorneys Arta Wildeboer and Ryan Ellis, offers expert insights into human resources issues and their legal implications, providing valuable guidance for navigating the complex intersection of HR practices and employment law. This informative series is essential for HR professionals and business managers seeking to understand and prevent legal challenges in the workplace.
The Employee Handbook - An HR Podcast by 2 Lawyers
I'm Sorry, but We Only Promote People Who Play Magic: The Gathering
This week we delve into a topic that is a common gripe for many employees - Supervisors playing favorites. The perception that the boss has a favorite among the employees can cause a lot of interpersonal tension in the workplace, but it is illegal for the boss to have a bff among the staff?
Our favoritism discussion centers around another Reddit post and we decide if what is going on runs afoul of any laws in California or on the Federal level and whether or not this person is an annoying crybaby.
We also talk about our potential future with Comedy Central and what happens when an employer receives either a Demand Letter or a Summons and Complaint and the difference between the two.
Hello and welcome to the employee handbook and HR podcast podcast. I'm Arta Wildebore, your host, here with Ryan Ellis, who's also a host, so I guess that makes me a co-host and Ryan a co-host too. I'm not really sure.
Speaker 2:I think we should both call each other hosts, and then we can fight over it later.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe we need to talk to a recruiter or something like that to find out exactly what our job is.
Speaker 2:I'm taking that for my resume and I challenge you to a host duel for the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, we might fight to the death or something like that. That was when I found out at the place where I buy my hair products that there were two other people named Arta who were in their system, because I was like she's like what's your name? I'm like Arta. She's like last name. I'm like what do you mean? How many Arta's do you have? She's like three. What?
Speaker 2:the hell. Oh my God, that's cool. I would have bet a lot of money that there was not a lot of Arta's a show for hair products. Oh, same.
Speaker 1:My wife talked me out of standing in front of the store with a sword to when the other Arta's came, so we could fight to the death. But anyway, welcome back to the Ryan Koff's awkwardly podcast.
Speaker 2:I'm going to try to press my cough button and I'm also going to try to not say the word. And now, when does it count?
Speaker 1:Or you know, I keep doing that as well. There's a lot of pauses. Well, we noticed these things ourselves and are very sorry for all the things that are annoying that we do. We're not professionals at this, and oh, there we go. I just said I'm again.
Speaker 2:Well, you would think that talking about it would make us less self-conscious, but you're wrong. It makes us more self-conscious, exactly.
Speaker 1:And now we've gone I don't know how many minutes without even getting to anything. But what we want to start out today with is a huge inaugural crashing of the no clashing of the Titans event, where in a movable object meets an unstoppable force and we're merging our two segments. Wait, which one am I? I don't know, Just pick one. You want to pick one, or we could?
Speaker 2:flip a coin. We'll flip a coin.
Speaker 1:I think I weigh more, so I'll be the movable force. It's just by default, but we are combining our famous segments, which Ryan's segment is called Billable Hours and mine is called Would you Take the Case to talk about? A Reddit post that I found while I was perusing the internet for stuff to talk about, and this is something that comes up a lot regarding the topic of favoritism at work. This is a huge, huge topic. I hear a lot as a plaintiff's attorney and I think, ryan, this is a problem that you probably deal with as well.
Speaker 2:All the time.
Speaker 1:And it's a huge problem within companies that they have to solve, because these favoritism discussions are usually a precursor to lawsuits. And so I want to go ahead and let's see. We're going to read a little bit from this post. It's really quick. So the post was titled Frustrated and here's the contents what do you do when your direct boss has favorites and doesn't care about showing it? I feel like I work harder than the favorites. Well, yet I can never get a break. She parentheses. The boss takes opportunities from me and gives them to her favorite. Well, I'll call her Julie, or parentheses, sorry, I'll call her Julie, just so that they shine brighter. I love the company and would hate to leave, but I just can't handle the unfairness anymore. It really hurts and I'm very depressed about it. I should add that my boss is the HR lead. I'm a colored person their words, not mine and America and not American, and sometimes I think I'm being treated this way because of that, although I hate that thought. What would you do? Thanks in advance.
Speaker 2:You know that was a roller coaster for me of emotions as a defense attorney or in my role as a defense attorney, because I thought I have a very funny. Well, I know I have a very funny response for the first, most of that, and then when I said I'm thinking, and then it goes to the part where my boss is the HR lead and then I'm a colored person and not American. Sometimes I think I'm being treated because of that and that's where I get serious and bad for the employer in my comments. So just want to give a precursor to where I'm going, a preface, a foreshadowing, prophetic speech to where I will be in a few minutes. But, arta, please kick us off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a really good idea to break it down into different parts, because the first part, where they're talking about how the boss has favorites and there's favorites in the office, is something that I hear all the time. People come in and say the boss has somebody that they always hang out with and have lunch with and they give me harder work or they always tell me to hurry up and they're always looking over my shoulder and things like that. And then, of course, the real kind of elephant in the room is when they toss in at the end.
Speaker 1:I'm a colored person and not American, and sometimes I think I'm being treated this way because of that. That is something that, as a plaintiff's attorney, if somebody comes into your office and tells you that, you sit up straight and you start wanting to hear their story and start wanting to get a lot of details and facts, because that's something that could be very lucrative for a plaintiff and very damaging to an employer and you can end up as an employer mired in litigation on something like this for a long time.
Speaker 1:So, ryan, do you want to address a little bit about just the favorites aspect and whether I mean is it legal to have favorites if you're a supervisor?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So my first initial response to this would be very antagonistic and be like well, you're telling me that this person doesn't want his or her coworker to get favorable opportunities because that coworker, potentially, is just doing their job better. Now we don't have enough facts here to see if there's any basis for favoritism or if there's any reason why this person, whether legally or illegally, is being given a different treatment or short shrift at the job. We also don't know much about their employment and all that other stuff. But my first response is why are you complaining to me or to the HR person? If they ask me this question? Why is this person complaining or why did we get this complaint?
Speaker 2:In quick answer no, it's not illegal to have favorites, or unlawful or against any policy, unless there's some similar to nepotism policy in the handbook, which I don't usually see. I haven't seen in a while. But I would say it does become an issue when, if assignments are given an opportunity, if all the opportunities are going from the boss to Arda, there's going to be a problem. So just vague terms or vague facts we have here. No, it's not illegal to have favorites, especially given that that's work. I mean, I worked at big companies, where I've had people that I like to talk to and people I didn't like to talk to. That's just life and that's work.
Speaker 2:Last, I know I'm speaking a lot on this, but I had to tell my kids the other day, because every time we do something that they don't like, they say it's not fair. For every time one kid gets a donut, the other kid gets a donut, even though they're similar sized donuts. One has sprinkles, one doesn't. It's not fair. And trying to get across to a four and a six year old or anything really, but this specifically, that life is not fair, that sometimes the people that work harder get more opportunities, the people that sometimes luck is involved.
Speaker 2:But life is not fair. You're not going to go through and not everybody drives the same whatever color vehicle, live in the same house, in the same neighborhood, on the same street, with the same income. That would be equality and fair and, I guess, communism, but nothing is to that level. So here again, with all the facts we have, let's just assume the worst on my perspective. So, assuming this person just complaining about nothing, then essentially the response from each other is look, life is not fair, get over it, focus on your work and if you have a personal problem with the individual, we can address that. But if you're just seeing these things from a third party perspective and you're just jealous of it, get over it.
Speaker 1:Well, I agree with everything you're saying.
Speaker 1:I just think that way of dealing with people, especially with younger people, and expectations their generation has on how they're supposed to be treated at work and how people treat each other just generally interpersonal relations I think you have to slow down a little bit and validate how they're feeling and kind of ask how they're feeling and kind of act to address what's going on and I think, if it's appropriate, yeah, you shut it down, depending on the circumstances, but also, depending on the circumstances, try to be a little bit more empathetic because of something that we talked about in an earlier podcast the wrongful termination lawsuits and harassment and discrimination lawsuits are driven by emotion. People who are suing for those types of things are people who feel like they have not had their complaints or concerns validated, who feel like they have not been given a fair chance to explain if they're being fired or disciplined. So I think that's a very important thing that we have to talk about, just in the way that you talk to these employees when they bring up subjects like this.
Speaker 2:Well, it's weird because it sounds like we're on the same page with how to deal with the issue, at least at the stage early on the first stage yeah. Which again is, I think, patently ridiculous, and I'm not a fan. I've been in the Meyer. I'm going to try to use big and complicated words, Arda, to try to be like Four letters Meyer.
Speaker 2:Well, but I don't even know if I'm saying it right. I try to be in the trenches of this employee. I mean, we all grew up I mean I'm going to say we all, as in the people who had jobs we all grew up having jobs, working, for I worked for a hotel chain and a restaurant, I worked for a bar and grill, I worked for a car detailing shop. I mean, I have a long history of random jobs as growing up as a kid, and we've all had personal experiences and we all have different ways of dealing with our conflicts and issues. But I think me as an adult, I'm speaking for myself personally and I know a lot of people that I know in any job these days that are out of their 20s.
Speaker 2:Essentially, you go to work to go to work and do a job. You don't go to work to have fun, and I'm going to quote my dad, who says if work was fun, they would call it fun, but it's not. They call it work because you go and you work. Yes, people enjoy their job. I enjoy my job, Like all of this stuff is there, but it's not fun. You're not there to have fun, especially as an employee. You're there to do a job and to leave. Can you make it enjoyable? Yes, Can you make it bearable? Yes, Are you having fun? Sometimes? Maybe you love your job and that's great.
Speaker 2:But this person in this example does not sound like they love their job because they're focusing their and there's a point to this. I promise that they're focusing their attention to other people, what other people are getting, what other people are doing, as opposed to doing their job. Again, I'm going to assume the best situation for the employer here in my discussion, which is this employee maybe isn't performing well and maybe this employee is spending an hour a day looking around the office trying to find out who's doing what, to get dirt on people or not focusing on the job or just delaying whatever. Maybe their performance isn't well, Maybe and again I don't know if this is the reason, but maybe not being from America, there's a different work culture from wherever this person is, and that's fine. But again, to sit there and complain about things and not try to take action personally to fix the situation, I think is a big misstep. That's gone on a lot here.
Speaker 1:And I think here understanding the way that different generations I mean, I think first of all, I think it's stupid to split people up into generations, it doesn't really make sense. But anyway, younger people, I think I have a very different idea of what work is supposed to be like than older people. I mean, we're kind of born in the early 80s and a lot of your expectations about work and what life is going to be like is born out through watching media and TV and things like that. And everybody kind of expected around our age for work to be difficult, for your boss to yell at you for you know you have to earn your place and things like that. So getting yelled at and things like that was not something that was foreign in terms of expectations for what work is going to be for a lot of people. And it's changed a lot. And that's one of those things.
Speaker 1:Is HR being in charge of culture or driving culture, and a company has to be aware of Just balancing of, legally, what is your exposure here? And then, as a person, how do you handle this? Because, legally, if you feel like you don't have the legal exposure, maybe you just want to tell this person to fuck off and leave you alone. But if you are worried, you have legal exposure. You might be a lot nicer. But I think, because of the way that decisions to sue companies by plaintiffs, by ex-employees, is very much emotionally driven, you have to be very aware of the emotions that are causing this person to bring up this problem or feel like this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just to kind of highlight what you just said, you might, as HR professionals or legal professionals, want to tell them to fuck off, or you know, hey, you're bullying the other way out of my office. Two things to focus on this first part of this example, which is why don't you force you would never say it to that person. That way we know that we're speaking very candidly about how people think about these issues sometimes. The two is that we have to take into account that this person is the HR lead. So if you're going to complain to HR in this situation, if that's your boss, you're not going to complain to your boss, right? So you look to a policy to see who to report to if your boss or your direct report is someone who's causing these issues or just go above them.
Speaker 2:But so, taking it back to, like a professional standpoint, what I would do in addressing this first part although I said how I would do it, in one or two sentences, using a couple swear words or choice words we would inform the HR person or the person that we acknowledge the issue, that doing so we see is affecting his morale and could affect the team morale, overall culture of the company and his productivity, or her I don't know if it's a year for she or however they identify, that's fine and that we would tell them.
Speaker 2:Essentially, in telling them that we don't believe there's an issue here, or that we'll look into it or we're conducting an investigation or whatever, depending on how bad it was that we're doing so to not only address the concerns but to make sure we're promoting a fair and inclusive workplace and how important that is, and then that essentially, we're there to address those concerns and to help. Now again, I think a very nice letter with one or two paragraphs and possibly a discussion will rid yourself of this problem and to show that you're being empathetic to this person, which addresses the previous concerns we talked about, which is these employers employees just sometimes want to be heard and felt that their complaints are valid or at least validated in some certain way, so they don't just sit there and stoop.
Speaker 1:And one thing that people have to keep in mind is that once these complaints go up the chain, it's like playing a game of telephone that the message will get lost the further it goes up the chain and this person is just gonna be looked at as an annoyance. Their personhood it kind of gets lost as HR takes it up to a C-suite person. Maybe it goes up to general counsel or whatever it is. So I think if this person were to come in my office just talking about favoritism, I would tell them you really don't have much of a case here. If you don't like the environment, I would suggest that you look for another job or find a way to manage your feelings and manage your relationship with your boss.
Speaker 1:But again, another thing that I would tell them to do is put it in writing and send them a letter, because as an employee, if you complain a lot of times, you have a target on your back, and so if you write a letter describing the things that you're afraid of or that you're dealing with, afraid of being retaliated against, I should say you know and being fired for complaining, go make up something. Oh, you're tardy, one day you're fired. I would write a letter if I was the employee to HR and kind of explain and then let them take it from there because that's also gonna protect you. And if you're a company where an employee writes a letter like that to you, just know that they've probably retained an attorney or at least gotten some advice from an attorney about this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a very good point. I think there's absolutely a reason for your side, or the plaintiff's side, employee's side, however you want to address it, to put it in writing, document it make sure that there's an understanding that this complaint was made because, as we will get into in a few minutes the second half of this example, if the complaint or this issue leads to a lawsuit or any form of arbitration or other litigation, that's gonna help the employee and obviously be detrimental to the employer, depending on what they do Now, in addition to what I said earlier, depending on the facts, of course. Actually, this is a good time to put in our caveat and our little asterisk not legal advice, entertainment purposes only. We're not your attorneys. We'd love to consult with you if you're in one of our jurisdictions California, nevada, texas, michigan, sure, some others throughout our firm but we just want to make sure you know that again, give the standard one every time. We're not financial advisors, we don't offer financial advice. Do not invest in stocks because of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1:It's all for fun. No tax advice either.
Speaker 2:No tax advice. Trying to think what else I have in my engagement letter Anyway. So going back to so I pay your taxes.
Speaker 1:that's our one bit of tax and places to pay your taxes yes yes.
Speaker 2:So, going back to what the HR, what the company should do, obviously address the concerns depending on the level of severity. You want to make sure you give it enough consideration to avoid the you didn't investigate issue. Again, just on the fact that there's favoritism, depending on how bad it is, again there could be an issue where you have to address it with the HR manager or HR lead that they can't do this anymore. Maybe notafile I would assume there's not going to be a PIP in place because it seems a little excessive for this but maybe a good middle ground is with all of the e-learning available today to employers through not only HR services online third-party services, but through insurance carriers that maybe offer the HR lead training and awareness program something to talk about how to avoid favoritism but still maintain your friendships and personal relationships in the workplace and then report whatever you do back to the employees, say, hey, we told you all this stuff in the first place.
Speaker 2:After we investigate, we thank you for the complaint, then follow up with we investigated, we looked into it, we did whatever. It won't happen again. We're striving to do the best and we did XYZ. I would think that an employee who's made these comments or complaints to HR or to a supervisor or to a C-suite or whoever that would listen. Given that it was an HR lead here that did these things receiving a confirmation that the complaint was addressed, along with maybe training or notafile being done. I think that it would satisfy a lot of concerns and avoid this being an issue going forward Again, not saying they won't sue later, but who knows?
Speaker 1:Yeah, all you can do is mitigate that. That's one thing that, as an HR person, as general counsel, as C-suite person, you have to live with is that you're gonna get sued. It's gonna happen sometimes. There's nothing you can do. There's every company, no matter how many attorneys they have, no matter how many HR people they have on staff, no matter how good their general counsel is, how much they wanna remain compliant, there's a chance that you're gonna get sued and there's nothing you can do about it. And so you just have to conduct your business and set up your business in a way to mitigate the consequences of being sued, which just means paying out less money when you do get sued.
Speaker 2:Yep agreed.
Speaker 1:So I wanna add a few more facts from the original poster here, and we're gonna do that in segment two because we're coming up on almost 20 minutes, maybe a little less. We'll be right back and we are back. We just wanna give a shout out to our sponsors, Law Office of Artawilderbauer and Laws Ryan Ellis, who very generously sponsored this podcast by paying for our yearly Zoom subscription, where we get to go over 40 minutes and not get cut off at that 40 minutes and then awkwardly have to explain to the other person that you didn't pay the $120 a year for your Zoom subscription.
Speaker 2:Well, those sponsors sound amazing.
Speaker 1:They are. They're the best. Let me tell you the best Law Office of Artawilderbauer and Ryan Ellis Law Corporation, two of the greatest sponsors that any podcast could have. So again, law Office of Artawilderbauer and Ryan Ellis Law the best sponsors ever. We don't know where they came from and who they are, but they're awesome. So anyway, end of commercial.
Speaker 1:I wanna read a few more facts from the original poster on the situation we're talking about in segment one. So, in response to a question from a commenter talking about, is it possible that Julie, the other employee the favorite gets work because she asked for it and does a good job, which was what Ryan was mentioning? This is what the person has said. I have responsibilities and always go above and beyond. I asked to be a part of different projects which I complete successfully. I work from 8 am to 6.30 pm while Julie comes and goes as she pleases. I know for certain that she doesn't do more than me, and the latest that happened was that the boss took a project that I led that turned out very successful and gave it to Julie with zero explanations to me. Also, this favoritism from the boss is not only towards me. Another person from the HR department left because of it. It's very frustrating and depressing. I will talk to the boss the day I quit and make sure she knows why I'm leaving.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's not good.
Speaker 1:It's kind of loaded. I mean, if I'm a general counsel or outside counsel or HR person, hearing the day I quit makes me feel a lot better in the sense that you're not likely to get hit with a wrongful termination because they quit. So I mean that's very promising, I guess. But well, from a company standpoint, that you're not going to get sued. I don't know if it's promising in building culture and stuff like that, but we're not really here to talk about that. So we'll talk about that and we're just going to focus on the legal issue.
Speaker 2:Before we get to this, I want to jump in. I love the other comments. Ask your boss how you can be her favorite too. Hey, I noticed you're giving favoritism to Julie as he rolls. He or she rolls his eyes or her eyes, but hey, how?
Speaker 1:can I be?
Speaker 2:your favorite? Yeah, I don't know. Sorry that to me is the worst. That's the worst comment I'm candy.
Speaker 1:If you want to be my favorite at work, just fly me with candy. You know Twix. I'm a really big Twix fan, anything south of it, left or right. Left or right? Oh, left or right, twix, do you mean? Yeah, I just, I'm an animal, I just eat them, I don't even take them out of the wrapper, I just destroy them.
Speaker 1:I just crutch them in the wrapper and just pour them in my mouth like this, but anyway. So again, you know a lot of the stuff that she's talking about is very feelingsy, which is attorneys we don't really like to deal with. You know, accept an employment case is once we have grounds for a discrimination case. Then we want to know about your feelings. But you know this.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I got to interrupt you again, I'm sorry. This is a great podcast, I interrupt. There's another comment that says from just an outside perspective, you seem like an emotional person. This isn't a bad thing, but if your boss isn't, you won't match and you definitely not communicate effectively with each other. That I think it's a dead on from what we're talking about right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's as a person. If you're the one experiencing favoritism, you really have to ask yourself what is the basis of this favoritism, and is it just that the other person is better at their job than you are? You know, a lot of what they're saying seems a little bit unreasonable, except when you get to the other part. When we talk about the racism issue, which is something that every company kind of dreads to have to deal with because it's such a loaded issue in the United States and can lead to a lot of bad press for a company. Getting accused of racism, of course, is really the kind of worst thing that could happen for a company in the sense of legal exposure and bad press. So let's talk a little bit about that. Brian, if now you're not just dealing with a favoritism issue and the HR lead comes to you and your position as a consultant or general counsel, what are you saying when you hear that the person thinks they might be treated differently because of their race?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the second part, as we prophetically opined earlier was the second part of this is a much bigger issue and a much more serious issue, both, I think, from your side and the employer side here. If I received this from an employer, or if I was the employer, if I was in HR, we'd have to conduct an immediate investigation. I think that it would be improper to advise, not to and to give this any sort of short shift. Now. It obviously calls into account a lot more and it's going to be way more involved to perform this kind of investigation and you're going to have to talk to not only the HR lead, this person, but also Julie. You're going to have to talk to Julie about it.
Speaker 2:It's going to be very awkward and the other thing that is going to suck for this employee is nothing's going to get better personality-wise between the HR lead, julie and this person, because clearly you're complaining about them and everybody's going to know about it with this investigation. But again, for the company's perspective, got to do it. Lots of problems, lots of big problems here. Not only do you have color protection that you're dealing with, at least under federal law in California, in most states, I think, all states and then you have national origin, and then you have this favoritism issue. I don't know. There's a lot of bad stuff here and the first thing is immediate investigation, serious investigation.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a lot of bad stuff and it's going to affect the other people in the office, because now these people are and by these people I mean Julie and the supervisor are potentially going to become very defensive, as we were talking about.
Speaker 1:Nobody wants to be accused of being racist. It's a very serious thing to be accused of being racist, and some people if somebody was characterizing your work friendship as being racist against other employees that's something that is going to be very hard to hear, hard to take, and you're going to feel like the investigation is unfair and that you're being targeted now. So now you have not only one disgruntled employee as the original complainer, but you have the other two as well, and that could lead to potential legal exposure as well. These things are all very, very difficult to deal with and, as we said, sometimes there's no way to get out of these types of things that somebody is going to sue because they're emotional and there's nothing you can do as a company because you cannot micromanage to the level or degree that you could stop these things from happening.
Speaker 2:Then, from a plaintiff's attorney perspective, are you salivating at the mouth when you saw the second part, where you had all of these issues to deal with and potential actual grounds for a lawsuit, especially in a state like California?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, as a plaintiff's attorney, I'm really perking up when I hear the second part again, not to sound cynical or not to be accused of being cynical, but again, this is all about money. We're suing because we want to get money and we only want to sue when we can get a considerable amount of money from the company and that's going to take something that's going to make a jury react emotionally and want to punish the company. And something like racial discrimination is something that juries really become emotional about and will really punish a company for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially in a city, in a city county like Los Angeles that is extremely diverse, you're going to have a lot of issues with the jury, given it's most likely going to be diverse. So if you're an employer discriminating the based on race, color, national order and those kind of things, with a diverse jury, you're going to have a bad time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is a good foundation for a lawsuit. But then again you really have to talk to the potential client to see what was the kind of manifestation of this discrimination at work. Here we have somebody the original poster who was complaining about the other person being able to come and go as they want, julie in the office and being friends with the HR head, and so those things. That's really a fine line for whether or not something racist has gone on. And if this was going to be a good lawsuit I mean at this point, with the facts that we know- Hold on a second, don't take the case yet or don't deny the case yet.
Speaker 2:Let me add some facts here. Let's assume, because otherwise, I mean, I think we're both kind of in a weird like abeyance position. We don't really know what to do. Let's assume a couple things. One is company does nothing about it, whether or not it's invested. There's an investigation and turns out there's nothing done, or they give short drift or whatever. Assume that nothing is done. The employees left the status quo. The manager, or the HR manager and Julie both know about it and we fast forward in time to a place where we're kind of left. Now this mini bomber rocket has gone off, investigation conducted, we're back to status quo and this person comes to you and says hey, what do I have? What do I have? Legal remedy wise.
Speaker 1:Well, if you don't do anything.
Speaker 1:If the company doesn't do anything about it, that's something that could be further evidence or maybe not evidence, but it could definitely suggest that they don't care and that it could be racist because they didn't take it seriously. As a plaintiff's attorney, you're trying to find advantages in anything the company is doing, and reacting An underreaction to something like this is something that's going to make the case a lot more palatable to take on as a plaintiff's attorney, because now you have somebody who has possibly a very valid complaint. You're going to have to talk to the plaintiff here and or potential plaintiff here, potential client, and see if they're believable, if they're being overly emotional and how they're going to play with the jury if people will believe them. Those are all very important things.
Speaker 1:Let's say you cross that threshold. Then you have a company that is negligent in their duty to investigate serious allegations and that is going to put the company in a bad spot, especially during depositions. This is even if you don't necessarily have a case that's jumping out at you with facts that suggest racism. Once you get the HR person or Julie or whoever into a deposition, now all bets are off. A skilled plaintiff's attorney could really ask questions in a way to put them out on spot that will suggest that the company behaved in a way that would cause them to want to have to settle this case, or that they would be able to be characterized as a company that discriminates based on race.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then trying to jump again to the litigation part of it. If the employer doesn't have a good file on the employee, and whether or not there's a termination, maybe there's an adverse employment of an action where they avoid a promotion because of this lack of performance that they're not being given, which under California law we have our adverse employment action as a conditioned precedent to a lot of our claims here, employment-based claims here. If you don't have a file we hit on this earlier If you don't have a file on this employee note, the file, you don't have PIP, you don't have signed handbooks, you don't have whatever You're going to have a really, really bad time defending that in the litigation, Even if the actions on the employer side weren't necessarily unlawful. Now again you're in front of a jury. In a lot of counties you're practicing they're very diverse, which is amazing, but for this claim for the employer, it's not.
Speaker 2:So this is a good reminder to the employers out there and HR professionals out there to always maintain files, always make notes. If you're having a problem with an employee, document it, whether it's from a note, to file the smallest possible note or nobody really knows about it, as long as it's in there all the way up to through discipline and performance improvement plans, Want to make sure you have those documents because, again, if you're sued, that's the first thing they're going to request, If not before. If we're in California, there's a way to request the files before pursuant to the code. Again, you're going to have a very bad time. I don't know what that's from, but I like to quote. You're going to have a bad time.
Speaker 1:That is from South Park. That's the pizza French fries where they're learning how to ski, and if you French fry when you're supposed to pizza you're going to have a bad time. There you go.
Speaker 2:Don't out to South Park, to Matt and Trey.
Speaker 1:Exactly man and all the money that they've made from their media, which is the plan here. We're probably going to be on Comedy Central within the next few months. Based on the performance of our first four podcasts that have been uploaded, we are up to 96 downloads people. We are four downloads away from being 100 downloads certified, and we know some of the new people have just been listening to like the first four seconds and turning it off. Honestly, I don't have a problem with it.
Speaker 2:That's the best part here in the intro. We're out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as long as we get our stats up, then I'm happy. You know, I don't really care about anything else rather than numbers.
Speaker 2:I don't know about you, but I got my contract from Comedy Central already and it says if you sign this, just don't come to your S please.
Speaker 1:Just don't come to your S. Yeah, I'm probably got lost in the mail or something like that, but yeah, thank you so much for listening. We just want to give a shout out. So, everybody, thank you so much. I make light, but we do appreciate it because we hope we can make some sort of podcast Positive impact on your relations with your employees and give you a little bit of guidance. And to that end, I think we should talk about a little about what it looks like to get sued, and you mentioned that there are some ways in the code in California to get employee records before suing. And I think it would be a good time maybe to transition to talk about the demand letter versus the summons and complaint, because they're two very different things that could potentially lead to the same place, which is settlement, or the case going away or going to trial, but starting out in very different ways. So, ryan, do you want to quickly talk about the difference between getting served with the demand letter and getting served with the summons and complaint?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the first, I guess, natural progression and what we're seeing a lot of times. Covid changed a little bit because things went from straight demand letter to lawsuit. But the natural course or natural progression of how an employment lawsuit is received by an employer or its counsel is you receive a demand letter and usually that first there's either one or two. The first demand in the one situation there's a very detailed again the more detailed from the plaintiff's attorney the better, because the employer is more apt to look into it, respond and possibly settle early. But you receive a demand letter saying look, these are all the things that happen, these are all the things that happen, we know they happen, we have proof, whatever.
Speaker 2:A lot of BS in those letters are very, very long-winded, like artist vocabulary, and they ask for a crap ton of money. And then they say well, we're entitled to do this crap ton of money, but we'll settle for some lower amount of money, which is still absurd, or we'll go to mediation. Right, we're going to mediation the screw you pay us, or we're going to sue you letter, which happens all across the spectrum of big firms, little firms and good claims to bad claims.
Speaker 2:But you have the second way of doing it, which is the first letter you receive from a plaintiff's attorney, or sometimes from the employee him or herself, is hey, I want my file and the file portion of it. In California, specifically, you require an employer, when received they receive a demand for the file. They have to produce it within 30 days under labor code section 1198.5. If they don't, there's a 750 fine or penalty that that employee can receive through litigation, plus attorneys using cost to get to that point. I pause and hesitate because the $750 fee is a little ridiculous. To get that $750 fee the employee has to sue the employer, prevail a trial and then file a later motion for fees and costs on that one issue. Now, $750 is not a lot of money to an employer when you're talking about spending $50 to $100,000 in defense costs for a very basic case. So a lot of times employers just don't respond because by not responding so I'm going, I'm going behind the curtain on defense litigation here. This is actually huge.
Speaker 1:This is something a lot of people know and something that's developed since COVID and is a corollary of the fact that cases that used to take maybe a year to get to trial which put a lot of pressure on the defense council when they were dealing with a very, very responsible and proactive plaintiffs council was that you don't have a lot of time, and with COVID all these cases got pushed back. Courts went from having an average of, say, 500 cases per judge per courtroom to about 900, and this has really made it difficult for people to get a trial within even two years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a very good point. And to add kind of to that is if the employer doesn't provide the records to the, to the employees attorney, like you, if I don't send you out of the employers records, employees records you're not going to have any confirmation or any documents to support no or not to support the claim or to discredit the claim from the employer. So you're stuck, literally stuck with what your client provided you and is or otherwise, testimony, and that's it. But if the employer provides a file, and obviously there's, they're reducing a cause of action under 1190.5, but they're giving all of the, they're supposed to be giving all of the employee file, which in California is very vague, but at a minimum everything that the employee signed to the employees attorney.
Speaker 2:And what is that employees attorney going to do? Their incentive eyes to find something in there to sue you for Right? So that's the first step, that's the first step of demand in this two phase process, the second step being a follow up letter from the attorney essentially saying thank you, we received the file or not. Here's our demand letter, which is very long winded and they want, you know, some crazy amount of money. But and we'll go to mediation or we'll settle with you for some smaller amount of money and really the difference is the first demand for the employee records under 1190.5 pursuant to labor code, various labor code section, including section 432, and possibly for wage records, depending on what that employee may believe is wrong.
Speaker 1:Just to be clear even though you've gotten a demand letter and not a complaint, you still need to talk to your attorney about this is still something that you need to bring your attorney. Usually in situations outside of employment, if somebody gets a demand letter, I'll usually tell the client just ignore it, doesn't have any legal effect. Don't don't worry about it until you actually get suit Because, talking to the other side, you might give up stuff that you don't want to give up information or just started dialogue that you can't get out of and honestly, it's a good strategy in non employment cases I would say to ignore demand letters until you get something serious going.
Speaker 2:Well, because that forces them to. What is this, what's the saying? Crap, or get off the pot like it forces you to do something and it forces their employee, the employee, to do something. Force the employees attorney to really make us take a stand on. Do I trust my client, my client going to testify well, in front of a jury? Do I believe the clients facts, all of those things, and am I going to put two years of my work out for this person based on their you know what they're saying and their lack of documents?
Speaker 1:That's a great point, because that was the next thing that I was going to talk about is some people might be wondering Further a little bit why? Why would you send a demand letter versus just going ahead and suing? There's a few reasons. Number one it costs 500 bucks to file the lawsuit, and if you're a plaintiff's attorney, usually doing this on contingency, which means that you're going to be paying the costs A lot of times I mean depending on the client, but a lot of times you're paying the costs for the lawsuit and that's going to cost you $500.
Speaker 1:And not only that a lot of times, the things that the employer is talking about needs to be proven.
Speaker 1:You need to see what kind of company you're dealing with, to see if they're going to be a big problem to sue or if they're very disorganized and it's going to be a company that is basically shooting themselves in the foot with the way that they run their HR department.
Speaker 1:And so you you as a plaintiff's attorney want to investigate things a little bit further and talk to opposing counsel or the HR department for the company to see if you can see if what what your client has been or potential client has been saying is true about what happened at that company.
Speaker 1:So it gives you a little bit more leeway than if you're filing a lawsuit, which is a lot more serious. If you file a lawsuit, then it's one of those things that you really have to go through with. I get a lot of clients that also say, oh, it's just file the lawsuit and we'll see how it goes, and if they don't want to settle, we'll just draw it. Well, it's not that easy, so just to do that, that's kind of very uninformed way of going about it. So the the demand letter just gives you the opportunity to investigate a little bit further without being tied down by the lawsuit and all the formal constraints that are now set on you because you're in a lawsuit, versus sending a demand letter and going to mediation without having a lawsuit file.
Speaker 2:Well, and then, in this kind of to illustrate this, this point goes very well said. To illustrate this point, though, let's apply what you just said to the last segment example. This person comes in and tells you that there is favoritism, that there's this, there's that, and then they also kind of pepper in there the color and national origin, race, potential issues. I mean that, that, to me, is a wobbler, is that? Well, they spent a lot of time in their example talking about how they're just weren't happy with the favoritism, with no concrete examples, but then again they said a lot of buzzwords at the end. You know, discrimination is not from here. You know, possibly color, because they said they're not. They said they're colored of color.
Speaker 2:So I mean there's a lot there. I mean I mean I would think, from a from a plaintiff's attorney perspective, if you weren't sure you're taking the case and have concrete examples, didn't have like, oh yeah, we got this employer, your employer, their screw, they screwed something up. You're going to need that demand, you're going to need to try to verify some of these claims, because, again, two years of a plaintiff's attorney's life on some income I think they call it, and the cool kids call it is a lot of work and a lot of risk which I think you'd want to avoid, which, again, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I was just going to say we talked a little bit earlier about how difficult it is for the representatives of the company to be caught in a deposition, but just as much for the plaintiff as well, because I've had situations where the plaintiff is sitting in a deposition where they've claimed discrimination, they've claimed harassment, and then you know when they're asked straight up, what is this lawsuit about? I think we might have mentioned this before, but you know they'll say something like I just want to get paid for my back injury and you know that's one of those things that will just sink a case immediately. And so if you don't have a lot of confidence in your client, you're not going to want to go ahead and move forward with with a lawsuit and I agree with that.
Speaker 2:And that again, not to keep saying, highlighted this, these examples. But that highlights the reason why an employer would not want to respond to the demand letter. Yes, there's a penalty, yes, or the potential you're going to get sued for not providing, and on that basis only, and going to try on losing and spending all this money. But there's also a better chance that an attorney is not going to take that case and that they can't take the case or they can't take the case because they don't have any confirmation from their client that anything actually happened. They're just sitting there with some amount of facts that they cannot verify or discredit and they're just not comfortable taping it forward and that's a big.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying that any employer should not comply with the law. They absolutely should and it's always our advice, from at least my office, to comply with every single law they require, to every demand. Let everything I'm not an enforcer, not in the mafia that I can talk about. So it's one of those things where you know all you can do is sit there. But strategically, litigation strategy is, you know, you're taking a lot of balls out of this pitching machine to give to the attorney on the other side to sue the employer. You don't provide that file.
Speaker 1:It becomes very difficult as a plaintiff's attorney to want to commit to something like that when you don't have a lot of information, because one of the things that's very helpful especially if you don't have a smoking gun email with that says something racist or recording or something of that nature kind of hard evidence, which a lot of times these cases lack, is witnesses. And a company that has good culture, that does investigations, that takes things seriously, is going to have employees that respect the culture and not lining up to be a witness in a case against the company. So that's why it's kind of very important to have this good culture in place, because if you do get sued, you want to make sure that it's by a rogue actor and it's not just a representative of a class of employees who have been feeling this way. Because if it is, that, one lawsuit can really trigger a whole bunch of other lawsuits or a whole bunch of people coming out of the woodwork with similar claims and that could really be damaging to a company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, agreed, and that's another reason to keep things in arbitration, which is a subject of another conversation for a future podcast. So I don't want to step on where you're at here on this stuff, but this might be a good time to talk about instead of, like you know, lawsuit route. We kind of addressed how that would start from this employee, from our example earlier but maybe talk a little bit about making sure your HR department and your company is complying to first doing their jobs but then complying with internal policy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I think we can break here. We're in a end segment to give our sponsors another chance to get in your ear and tell you about their great products and great services that they have, and we'll be right back. And we're back with segment three. Segment three is called we Scare the Shit Out of you, also known as this Is why you Need an Arbitration Clause. We're still working on the name thing. This is brought to you by our sponsors. Of course, we'd like to give a big shout out to our sponsors, who make this podcast possible. Our first sponsor is Ryan Ellis Law Corporation, very generous sponsor who has I don't know. What did you, what? No, what did they?
Speaker 2:I don't know these people I just heard they're great. I don't know what they. You take all the money. I just talk. I don't know what they paid, I just know they're good people and you should patronize their business and our services.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks to Ryan Ellis Law Corporation, we'll have to wingstop after this. And then also our other wonderful sponsor, law Office of Art of Will DeBoer, who has generous Also great people.
Speaker 2:I never met them, never heard of them, but a little bit less great than the Ryan Ellis people I've heard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just talked to them on the phone, you know when they wanted to sponsor us, so that's the only reason I know. Okay, so in this wonderful segment we want to talk about huge jury verdicts that have happened here in California. That should scare any employer, and the first one that we want to talk about is a $464 million verdict that was here in LA Superior Court where a jury awarded two employees of I think it was LA County for a case that dealt with sexual harassment, racial harassment in the workplace and wrongful termination.
Speaker 2:I don't even know what to say. To this I mean $464 million, full disclosure. I've not read the verdict. I've not checked the appeal process. I would venture to bet, I would bet.
Speaker 2:I would, I would bet a lot of yes, venture to guess, eventually guess that this has been appealed, probably in the annals of the appellate process. But oh my goodness, I could not imagine being a plaintiff or a plaintiff's attorney and getting in Los Angeles County so state court, a $464 million verdict, 440 of that being punitive. I mean, that is, there have to be facts here that are just absurd. I mean, this is so. I'm in shock. This is exactly what you have to have as a plaintiff's attorney to kind of advertise, hey, I'm so good. But in the employer side, like I mean, you're firing your attorney, I would assume. But and again, I don't know who did it. I'm sure there was basis on that stuff, but oh my goodness. And from the defense side, like you said, to use my word, highlight arbitration clause, have enforceable arbitration clause.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is the only thing you can do really to combat getting to this point. I think, arbitration clause, there's something that California has tried to target to take out of employee contracts, and I think there's even a little bit more momentum in the on the federal side to get rid of these things because they really put employees in a very tough position, because the arbitration famously, I think really awards maybe, I think, 17% on average of what jury verdicts are.
Speaker 1:So that's a huge, huge, huge amount of difference between going to arbitration and going to a jury. Arbitrators in employment cases are paid directly by the defendants, by the employers, because the law says that the employees don't have to pay anything over and above what they would have to pay to file a lawsuit, which is, in California, about 500 bucks. So it's a good thing for the employees in the sense that they only have to pay 500 bucks, but now they're in a forum which is less likely to reward them for damages in the same way that a jury would or the threat of a jury would. So you would probably get a higher settlement if you're in court and settled before trial, whereas if you're in arbitration and you want to settle during the mediation, before the arbitration starts, you're probably going to settle for a lot less, because there's a lot less potential damages to be awarded in arbitration.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so a little bit more about this case.
Speaker 2:It was in Los Angeles, it was jury verdict. Yes, it was brought by two men who alleged they were forced, who alleged oh my goodness who alleged they were forced out of their jobs at Southern California Edison and exactly they complained about repeated sexual and racial harassment in one of the offices. I think it's interesting because this is a sexual harassment case brought by a male which is, I'm not going to say atypical, but for a verdict of size, I would not have guessed it was a male or two males. In this situation there's two plaintiffs and one of the plaintiffs alleged that after being at Edison for 16 years, he's pushed out of a supervisor job, constructively saying that Southern California Edison created and permitted an intolerable working condition to force him out after he reported widespread harassment and racist language. I mean this to me screams of large verdict, but there's also screams to me prove it Right. I mean there's no way that you can get this kind of money without showing some blatant and patently bad harassment, discrimination excuse me, harassment and racist things going on inside the company.
Speaker 1:Listen you're not even get a hundred grand as a plaintiff if you can't prove that, let alone four hundred and sixty four million. There's twenty two and change and compensatory damages and then the rest being punitive damages. I mean, that is just a punishment for behavior that has to be absolutely insanely egregious and usually that deals with retaliation, that deals with the company covering up things, botched investigations, wrongfully terminating the employees that complain. These are the types of things that companies do that really will expose them to lawsuits after hearing complaints from employees. But I can't even really wrap my head around, you know, four hundred thousand dollars or four hundred million dollars in a situation like this. But again, the lesson here is have an arbitration clause and do things the right way. And, ryan, what are some of the things that you can do if you're dealing with this to mitigate the ability for plaintiffs attorneys to get damages against you?
Speaker 2:No great question. And one of the attorneys comments. One of the plaintiff's attorneys comments said that these two men had the courage to stand up to the harassment and discrimination or racist comments and that the company's response was to pretend the problem was limited to a handful of bad actors, ignoring the culture of the company. This goes directly to what we were talking about earlier about having an employee handbook asterisk asterisk name of the podcast asterisk asterisk but at the same time having enforcement of your policies, making sure that you address complaints properly, making sure that you don't short-script anything I use that phrase a few times in this part, in this episode and giving really everybody the response of hey, we're taking this under consideration, we're going to conduct a fair and thorough investigation and provide a response, discipline or other action based on hopefully objectively, based on the facts that we have and what we find in our investigation. Clearly, sonnet, california Edison didn't do that, otherwise the jury would have awarded such ridiculous numbers. And again, I say ridiculous, jealous that it's not going to my bank account, but it's just ridiculous. So at the same time, really this is like one of the 440 million prime examples of why the company it's very important for company, I guess HR department company employees C-suite not only to have a handbook but to comply with the policies and procedures and, especially in California, comply with law, which is do not discriminate, do not retaliate. Do not discriminate, retaliate, do not harass. Take this stuff seriously, perform an investigation.
Speaker 2:If you had something of this magnitude, I would think that the SE would have hired an outside investigator or outside HR company to conduct an objective investigation. And again, I don't know the facts, I don't know all the facts, just making kind of comments based on the articles we've read here. But this to me, is something that just hits to the real foundation of what we talk about in this podcast, which is have an employee handbook, have their employees do their job, hold them accountable, make sure you have your file set and don't you know. Essentially don't allow for that to happen beyond the point of like an HR department running all these investigations when there could be bigger implications of that issue. Definitely get counsel involved.
Speaker 1:And I think there's a fear from a lot of companies that if they conduct an investigation they are paying credence to the complaints.
Speaker 1:And if they conduct an investigation, that somehow is gonna be evidence that something has gone wrong and maybe make other employees aware of the situation and create some exposure for the company, which I mean I guess it could be true that conducting an investigation it's kind of like well, I can't really think of the metaphor, but anyway it's kind of just.
Speaker 1:You know, they don't wanna whip people up into a frenzy, they don't wanna get the idea of suing the company into people's heads at all, and so they won't do an investigation because they think if they ignore it or if they do, like a botched investigation, these employees will go away and they won't reach a complaint, reach the complaint stage. But one thing I have to say about that is we talk about the emotional response driving people wanting to sue, and if you do these types of things, what you're doing is really guaranteeing that there's gonna be an emotional response here to the people that are bringing up these complaints and then either being ignored or feeling that like the company is kind of circling the wagons and creating a story or a narrative that really dismisses their complaints and puts them in a worse position than they were before they complained.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the rough dichotomy between what HR people think and want to do and what they think's gonna happen versus what the law says. California and again I don't have the federal law in front of me so I'm not gonna quote at ideal, mostly in California employment cases at the Defense Council In California, you have a duty a duty, an affirmative duty, to prevent and correct unlawful behavior pursuant to the law. So if you do not investigate, you are not meeting your duty period. I'm not saying that's the law, because a jury could find otherwise, but somebody like Arda Competit Council will hammer you, which I'm sure Council, in the case we're talking about, did. That's hence the verdict.
Speaker 2:But if you don't investigate, you don't do it properly, you don't do a full and complete investigation. You're gonna have a bad time. You're gonna have a bad time. You're gonna have a $460 million bad time. But just essentially, do the job, do the work. You're there to do a job. Don't have favoritism. Get through the investigation, comply with the law. No investigation equals no compliance with your policies or the law. If you have policies which, you should again employ a handbook and make sure you comply with those, because if you don't, you're gonna have a really bad time.
Speaker 1:Well, here's the thing even if you do all those things right and we talked about, there's no way to stop getting sued. There's no way to stop you from completely stopping getting sued, but if they would have done all those things correctly, this is something that they might have settled for $75,000 in mediation and never would have gotten out. Instead, they're now dealing with the specter of a $464 million verdict hanging over their head even though it's likely to get reduced on appeal.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter the impact on a company of having a verdict like that brought against them, even an institutional-sized company like Southern California Edison. That's just a huge, dramatic impact that will take years to recover from.
Speaker 1:But one thing about these investigations is that it's not necessarily the HR department who's responsible for not wanting to do these investigations, and a lot of times you have HR departments that really know what their responsibility is to their employees and wanna do it, but then they have an issue with the C-suite people who don't necessarily wanna act on the information given to them or the advice given to them by the HR department. And, ryan, this is probably something that you deal with a lot in your position. Consulting is companies that don't wanna listen to your advice. They pay for it and they know you're the expert, but then they don't wanna act on it. So HR departments deal with that a lot too. What would you say to an HR person that is getting a lot of either pushback from the C-suite or the C-suite just won't listen to that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you phrased the question very well because from an HR department, your job is to direct and advise. You can't tell the C-suite what to do if you're simply in an HR managerial role without a decision-making authority. You're a hey, this is, I did the research, here's what we have, here's what counsel says, here's your list of options, like pick one. You know C-suite doesn't do it, they don't do it.
Speaker 2:There's an example of client of mine who are not client of mine, ex-client of mine, previous client of mine, whatever who received a result from a third-party company discussing internal issues in the company.
Speaker 2:Those policies and suggestions from the third party that conducted the audit or conducted the research were not followed and that led to a significant litigation after the fact, which could have completely been prevented if the company made the right decision. And again, I'm not saying the company made the wrong decision, I'm not saying that they weren't completely followed, they're not providing company under the busier at all. But this is 464 million reasons as to why the C-suite needs to really give suggestions from the HR department full consideration, given potential issues in litigation. And again, just to kind of circle back to your question HR department, anybody minus decision-making C-suite HR person you just got to direct and you got to provide advice and provide options and situations like this speak up, make sure your voice is heard Because, again, you won't be held liable because you're not making the decision, but at the same time, you want to make sure you show you're doing your job.
Speaker 1:I think it's just. It's a very difficult position to be in as an HR person because, it's not like you can go to the employees and announce like, hey, listen, I tried, but these jerks up there at the CEO's office don't want to do what I'm telling them to do.
Speaker 2:You can't do that.
Speaker 1:And you're in the unenviable position at this point of having to carry out policies that have been decided upon by your superiors that you don't agree with, and that's a very difficult position to be in, and I think, again, that's why the relationship between managers and employees is so important for managers to be able to explain these decisions and not just leave it on HR Because, again, you know, so many of these things are dumped on the HR department that they're not supposed to be dealing with. Sorry, I'm sorry, bad habit.
Speaker 2:So this is another reason to have general counsel or even have a law firm on retainer to provide these questions to. Hey, we have this, you know, insert issue here Can you provide your comments? Or hey, we have this issue here. I have prepared a memorandum for you about what I believe our choices are. Can you vet it for me? Because you know an HR professional can have their signature on a memo with options to the C-suite or to management, but that's probably not gonna be given as much credibility which, despite the fact that it should be not given as much credibility as the same memorandum that's been blessed by counsel. So again, it's just trying to the bigger the decision, the bigger the issue. Obviously use more, try to get more research and consent to that to not persuade C-suite because again, you're just preventing options, presenting options but directing the right way to help them make the right decision.
Speaker 2:And again, in this set of facts, obviously this decision, or whatever the investigation was, was an issue from the start. That goes to a whole company culture issue. That goes to holding people accountable issue. That goes to, you know, strengthen management issue. There's so many things to talk about as to what went wrong in the beginning, which maybe is a good subject for like to going back and fixing and reverse engineering cases to see how it could have been prevented, kind of like the butterfly effect. But you know one of those things where you can't do that, I mean you can't look back or look forward and see what's gonna happen. But you can definitely look back and if you don't again the phrase, if you don't acknowledge history or understand history, it's doing to repeat itself something like that where, if you don't do that, you're screwed, and this is a prime example.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I'm gonna answer the question.
Speaker 2:That kind of went off there, my bad.
Speaker 1:No, no, it's a good point you make, because this is, of course, this is the answer to what's the worst that could happen. If you wanted to know what's the worst that could happen from running your company in a shitty way, here you go, that's it. It doesn't even have to be $424 million for a company. It could be a lot less, but again, this is the answer to what's the worst that could happen. So we want people to be very cognizant of the fact that a lot of these things seem like they'll go away or they're not a big deal, but they could be. You know, it's like the reverse lottery You're in it to lose it and you never know when your number is gonna be called. So let me see what do we got here.
Speaker 1:I think, if we're around an hour here, I think maybe we could wrap things up. We wanna thank our sponsors again Ryan Ellis Law Corporation for their generous sponsorship. Arta Wildebore his office Law Office of Arta Wildebore generously sponsoring this show as well and paying for ads on LinkedIn to draw all you wonderful people here.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm gonna take the half glass, half full approach and say we thank you for being here this long on this podcast and staying tuned in. If you have any thoughts or comments, questions concerns podcasts, ideas, let us know. We're always open, although we have our kind of topics we wanna talk about. You know, we wanna hear from you Heard from a couple of you already, mostly my family members, but that's okay, they're subscribers.
Speaker 1:We know there's around 98 people, or 96 people, who are listening to this thing. So you know somebody. If you have any Love you, I have a suggestion. We love you. We'd love to hear your suggestions. Hi, mom, how are you? Hopefully, mom, you've listened this far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, on that note, thank you all very much. We look forward to seeing you in our next episode, where we talk about something that you're gonna wanna hear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. That, you know, is very important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that thing, that one or two things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll talk about it in three minutes. We'll start the show next week. I think we'll do it when that's the end of the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks everybody.
