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
My Neck, My Back, My Rights Under Attack: Fighting Disability Discrimination
Navigating the labyrinth of disability accommodations and avoiding the snares of discrimination in the workplace can be as complex as a game of legal chess. With us, Arta Wildeboer or and Ryan Ellis, your guides through California's intricate employment law landscape, you're in for an enlightening strategy session. We dissect the spectrum of conditions covered by employment law and the strategic dance between employers and employees when it comes to reasonable accommodations. Along the way, we share real-world scenarios that bring to life the practical implications of these legal challenges, all with a dash of humor and a heaping of expertise to keep things engaging.
Ever wondered how the law distinguishes between various disabilities and what constitutes a reasonable accommodation versus an undue hardship for businesses? Our conversation takes you on a journey through the legal intricacies of both physical and mental disabilities in the workplace. From discussing the delicate balance of accommodating employees without fundamentally altering job roles to dissecting discrimination claims linked to performance issues, we ensure you're armed with the knowledge to navigate these tricky waters. We also delve into the emotional and financial stakes of these claims, providing vital HR strategies for managing complex employee relations.
Topping off this deep dive, we examine the emotional toll of litigation and the crushing weight of punitive damages on a company's bottom line. By emphasizing proactive communication and robust HR policies, we aim to shield your company from costly legal battles and protect the rights of employees. With our combined plaintiff and defense perspectives, we serve up a full course of legal insights flavored with practical advice and the occasional light-hearted anecdote, making this an indispensable resource for anyone vested in the world of employment law.
Hello and welcome back to the Employee Handbook and HR Podcast. I'm Arda Wildevor, your co-host here once again, and as always with Ryan Ellis.
Speaker 1:Hello, hello host here once again and as always with Ryan Ellis, hello. Hello here to talk to you again about issues in the human resources world from the perspective of me, a plaintiff's attorney here in California, and Ryan, a defense attorney in California who deals with employment issues. Just to get this out of the way none of this is legal advice. We're not your attorneys. Please don't take this as legal advice. Ryan, do you want to throw in anything else in disclaimer?
Speaker 2:I like to say for entertainment purposes only, because clearly by listening to this podcast you are entertained. Yes, and we would love to talk to you specifically about your individual claims, complaints, needs, desires, but nothing we say on this show is directed towards anybody specific. Everything is hypothetical. But nothing we say on this show is directed towards anybody specific. Everything is hypothetical and we're here to kind of shed light onto the greater issues and discuss our thoughts as attorneys based on our experience.
Speaker 1:Yes, Again, this is for entertainment purposes only. Every attorney I know doesn't want to be an attorney anymore and just wants to do a podcast. So we are living our dream. Unfortunately, it's not about the Lakers, like I originally intended it to be, but here we are. Hopefully we're still doing a good job in making it entertaining for you and helpful. We want to entertain you today by talking about a very important issue that faces a lot of companies and flummoxes the HR department, because of a lot of the specificity involved and all the nuance, and that is regarding disabilities and ADA accommodations and also accommodations under California law and the difficulty that companies have sometimes accommodating their employees and what leads employees then to sue for disability discrimination, because that's something that's a very common claim that happens in California. Here A lot of people are suing their companies for disability discrimination, which is in a lot of different ways, which, ryan, if you want to talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you hit on a very important topic and we're going to hit on this all day today, or all podcasts today which is disability in general. We're going to focus on not only the types of disabilities you know that range, and we'll talk about that in a moment to also, though, the claims that can be made on said disability, if it qualifies, and as well as what can be done if you suffer from or have a disability with your employer, how to handle it and, like Art has said, the nuance of going through that process.
Speaker 1:And one of the important nuances is also on the company side, which is undue hardship, because not every disability requires the company to necessarily bend over completely backwards to try to accommodate the employee. And there are limits, and those limits are what sets the tone for litigation and whether litigation is an appropriate remedy for somebody who felt like they've been discriminated against by their company for a disability.
Speaker 2:Right, no, and that's a very good rundown. Reasonable accommodation hits really hard fight or gets a really hard fight from employers my clients usually based on is it reasonable, is it an undue hardship on the company to place it for example? Well, I'm going to skip the example, we'll get to it later.
Speaker 2:So first let's talk about kind of the disability and what a disability is and isn't. Briefly, we did a bunch of research for today because we want to give you some specific, hard-hitting numbers, and we came up with a list here of numbers between 2016 and 2020 of claims made for discrimination based on disability. Only Now it was. To me it was shocking because I'm seeing a list here of various disabilities. Some I personally did not experience in the law and did not know they claimed or covered excuse me, were covered as disabilities, but they are and the numbers that were related to it, for example.
Speaker 2:Example, there are disability claims. You can make them for asthma, for brain head impairment, cancer, diabetes, all the way down through epilepsy If you have a learning disability, multiple sclerosis and then ending in paralysis and tuberculosis. Now, tuberculosis, thankfully due to vaccines, whether you believe in them or not. I don't know if it's because of vaccines I'm not trying to make a vaccine statement here but the tuberculosis claims have stayed steady in the last six years at about four a year. So good to know. But those four hail in comparison. Hail in comparison, not even on the radar of other claims such as anxiety or depression, or I guess I'm trying to think of another big one here, maybe a non-paralytic orthopedic impairment. So you know all these very important things that we deal with Now. I hit anxiety and depression for a reason. Arda, do you experience any issues with anxiety and depression and not you personally, because that's not relevant to this entertainment purposes only podcast, but in your job as a plaintiff's attorney?
Speaker 1:Okay, well, yeah, I think this podcast was going to last about three hours if we were going to get into that, just as a introduction to all the anxiety and depression a typical lawyer faces due to their work. But I also, just before we get into that, uh, I just like to imagine that all the tuberculosis claims are made by, uh, old cowboys, like doc holidays is claiming discrimination for not being able to work in his saloon because of tuberculosis, but well, that's that's wrong here.
Speaker 2:I take that back wrong era.
Speaker 1:wrong era. Um, oh, what the hell were we talking about? Disability, did you explain? Oh yeah, I'm an attorney, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1:That's a very difficult one. Anxiety and depression that's something I'll have potential clients coming in and telling me that they have depression because of their conditions at work or that their work causes them anxiety and they're not able to complete their job and they feel like they've been discriminated against at work because or not necessarily discriminated at work, but they can't do their job without some accommodations for their anxiety and depression that were caused by stressful conditions at work. And those are very, very tricky cases for plaintiff's attorneys because, like I said, of all the nuance involved and and therefore these types of cases really rely on doctor's reports and and really, as a plaintiff's attorney working with a doctor and a client to be able to get a picture of what has been causing the depression and anxiety, if it's related to work, and then how do we go about accommodating that and what kind of requests do you make to accompany Well?
Speaker 2:let me just really quick paint a picture as to what we mean. Artists had a lot of very important things there, but just to kind of paint a picture for the audience here of where we're going with this is if I'm an amputee and I get my left arm amputated, from the elbow down, I obviously have an issue typing with two hands because I'm missing one of them. That accommodation would be different and is perceived different, not only physically but in the law, as to how they would accommodate me. But that is something you can see, something that a doctor can easily write a note on to say this person cannot type with two hands. They don't have two hands currently available to them.
Speaker 2:But anxiety and depression is much different. Anxiety and depression is something internal to people, which is, again. Mental health is huge. It always has been, but has been apparently recently, only recently been brought to light of how big of an issue it is. Mental health is much harder to discuss and diagnose because it's very personal. And then, because it's very personal, it's very hard to accommodate Because, again, there's triggers, there's issues, there's traumas that you might not be able to accommodate, which makes it more difficult. Contrarily, if I am missing an arm or a hand, there's things that can be done to help me type or help me do my job. So that's the kind of the contrast we're trying to draw between a mental disability, like a mental health disability like anxiety, depression, as compared to a physical disability like losing an arm or not being able to walk or being paralyzed or something like that.
Speaker 1:And it's very tricky for employers because a lot of the damages and a lot of the basis for a lawsuit come from what the employer's reaction or what their plan of action is once they've been made aware of this disability by their employee. Because managers I think a lot of them lack the training to be able to deal with this kind of stuff. A lot of gossip gets around in the office and it becomes difficult for the people that are claiming discrimination to work in the office because maybe other employees don't feel like they're pulling their hands from the non-disabled co-workers who are having some sort of retribution or feeling some sort of way I guess is the best way I can say it against the employee who is asking for accommodations because they think it's unfair or not narrated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have. An example of this is that when I took the bar exam, I took the bar exam in two states, two different or one time each, but I noticed people that I was taking the bar exam with had different accommodations than I did. And it turns out that, you know, there's accommodations, requests made by people to take the test under different circumstances. At the time I thought that was unfair because I didn't deal with issues that may or may not have caused me to have an accommodation. But now I realize how important that is because of not only life experience but personal issues dealing with various, many things, especially with raising children that you understand that a lot of different things can happen and also a lot of different accommodations can be made that other people just don't like. Like the example of the bar exam.
Speaker 1:Well, I just want to point out that Ryan slyly inserted in there that he only took the bar exam one time in each state.
Speaker 2:I'm just thankful to be so lucky.
Speaker 1:That's all Very difficult to do in California. We want to give some other examples of disability harassment that we trolled the Internet to find. Here's some good ones.
Speaker 2:We trolled the internet to find. Here's some good ones. Coworkers intentionally tamper with a disabled employee's wheelchair and put up barriers that make it difficult for the employee to navigate the work area. That is just pure evil.
Speaker 1:Let me say that's pure evil and that's one of those things that the company definitely is going to be judged on. That's got to be a joke. People don't do that. Send me that link. That's got to be a joke. I have not run across that, but that's just one of the examples that I found. An intellectually impaired employee has his lunch stolen by coworkers as a means of harassment. I mean that's just horrible. I mean there are horrible people out there, but that seems really low. So anyway, these are just some examples that we want to use of how co-workers could be discriminating and harassing against a co-worker that has a disability and when the employer has a duty to then step in and do something about it or else they'll be liable and have greater exposure for damages because of their lack of attention to how much do you want to bet that, the people who you just spoke about, the person or persons conducting the harassment being the harasser?
Speaker 2:when they got in trouble, they complained that it was not their fault.
Speaker 1:How much do you?
Speaker 2:want to bet.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's just a joke. We're just messing around. This is a co worker that we all we're friends with them and they know that we're joking. I think that that's really. When we've been in depositions of harassing coworkers, that's usually the refrain that we get that oh no, they were in on the joke. They understood that we didn't mean anything. When we put up barriers around the office, their wheelchair couldn't get around, which is it's just patently ridiculous. But yeah, this is the kind of stuff that we get. I think we we mentioned in another podcast that you know people are generally morons and this is moron behavior, that that happens a lot in offices and in workplaces.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if people honestly did the best thing they should every day for everybody, and themselves and their surroundings we wouldn't have jobs either at HR professionals or attorneys.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I mean, yeah, that's. The unfortunate thing is that our jobs are predicated on people's stupidity and problems that they cause, but it is what it is. Everybody's got to eat. And I just also want to go over kind of a list of things that are considered mental disabilities and things that are not qualified to be mental disabilities as it relates to legal protections. Because, again, you know Ryan talked about, hey, you're missing an arm. You might not be the best person to, you know, chop down trees with an axe or a chainsaw if you're missing an arm, but it's much more difficult with mental disabilities. They're not as just obvious, I guess. So here are a few things that are considered mental disabilities that give you legal protections or that there are legal protections for are, for instance, bipolar disorder, clinical depression, schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, dementia and just in general, intellectual disabilities.
Speaker 2:What about my need, as an employee, to steal or light things on fire? Are those protected?
Speaker 1:No, those would not be protected. Kleptomania and pyromania arson not going to be protected.
Speaker 2:What about my sports betting and or gambling addiction?
Speaker 1:No, those are not covered, just like your losses. Those are not covered, just like your losses, and sexual behaviors are also not. Sexual behavior disorders are also not qualifying for protection. Legal protection are all things that you're going to need significant documentation for from a doctor and a diagnosis and something that you can prove to your workplace. That is affecting you.
Speaker 2:So we talked about things that do qualify as mental disabilities. We talked about things that don't qualify as mental disabilities. Do you want to go through any non-mental disabilities that people might not think that may be covered by a potential accommodation claim or request for accommodation, like asthma? I mean, asthma is not mental. That's something you can tangibly prove by what is it objective testing. Same with cancer. I mean the fact that you have to ask for accommodations if you have cancer, I think is absurd. I mean my heart goes out to everybody who has or has experienced cancer or has family member with them. Same with cerebral palsy. If you go to your workplace and they won't accommodate you because of cerebral palsy, I think that is again evil. But just, we don't want to underscore. I think what I'm trying to say here is we don't want to underscore the fact that there are tons and tons of physical disabilities also that do qualify beyond the mental one. We're just focusing on mental because how difficult it is to navigate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I was going to say I'm happy to go over those as long as you have the examples ready. It seems like you did, so I think that was great.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to take that, though, and parlay it to. We've talked about the kinds of disabilities. Do you want to move on to sort of the basis or basis for claims that you may bring to your employer or ask your employer for accommodation or issues you have that you've experienced because of disabilities, like the actual claims by discrimination type?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a great idea. How does this discrimination manifest at work? What are the things that people that are suffering from disabilities are going to? You know face and get to a point where they're going to need to feel like they need some sort of legal redress, and it's not just wrongful termination. I think that's really what Ryan was getting at. Most people think, oh okay, so you got fired because you know you got sick. That's really the most common thing. But yeah, ryan, what are some other things that you know you've dealt with? Advising clients.
Speaker 2:Well, before I do that, I was gonna ask you just flippantly when you file a lawsuit for discrimination, name to me what you would allege in a complaint, without even thinking about it. If somebody said, hey, I have a disability, what does your head think of immediately for causes of action against an employer? Harassment and discrimination, right, harassment and discrimination. And then for me, I always see it, it's failure to accommodate. We're always a termination, or mostly a termination, involved, otherwise we wouldn't be involved at that point. Um, and and then a slew of other issues, um, but so I bring that up because reasonable accommodation and wrongful termination, pursuant to our research and the data we found and sourced, are like the highest by far, exponentially, of claim types brought. So if, whatever your disability may be uh, schizophrenia, tuberculosis, paralysis, depression, anxiety most people are suing because of their disability for wrongful termination and failure to accommodate, and those, to me, are like you see those in every any disability claim I get across my desk to defend, it's always includes, it always includes those two causes of action.
Speaker 1:Sometimes go ahead. I was going to say failure to engage in interactive process is another one that's very, very common and almost accompanies every single lawsuit or claim made through any federal agency or state agency for discrimination and harassment.
Speaker 2:But some of the lower not lower tier, because the claims are the same, but the lower frequency of seeing these claims are claims for discrimination based on advertising or claims and discrimination based on excuse me early retirement incentives. Claims for discrimination based on the filing of equal opportunity employment forms, which is essentially. It's funny. If you're asking for equal opportunity employment and they fire you or take an adverse employment action Because of that, that's again a bad time. It's going to lead you to a lawsuit. But again, they don't come up that often. Also, job classification, maternity is surprisingly low, along with record-keeping violations and segregated facilities for people. So I think it's interesting to look at these numbers, because all of these categories that come up are odd to me and I think most people, again in my experience, lump them all together into what we talked about earlier failure to accommodate some kind of adverse employment action, such as a termination or demotion, and then, like you said, failure to engage in the interactive process determination or demotion and then, like you said, a failure to engage in interactive process.
Speaker 1:And then another thing that happens a lot is companies when they make missteps. One of the missteps they make is they try to force an employee out who is going to be difficult for them to deal with because of having to give them reasonable accommodations. Or companies feel like, once somebody has come out and said that they're disabled and need accommodations, that they're going to need to get rid of this person, and so what they end up doing is finding any excuse they can to discipline this employee and separate them somehow from their coworkers and just make their life difficult. So the employee will want to quit themselves, will want to quit themselves, because once the employee has quit, they have much less strength in their claims against their former employer without having a wrongful termination cause of action there. It's very difficult to prove constructive termination as compared to wrongful termination. So that's why we see a lot of disciplined claims too when it comes to discrimination.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and kind of to add this to the picture we painted earlier, if you get fired because you ask for a wheelchair ramp, that is the number one. Everybody can see that's a violation issue. Then you go down that path of easiest to prove versus the hardest to prove, easiest being that clearly they need a ramp. You don't do it. Next in line would be mental disabilities, where you can't necessarily see them or possibly deal with them on a scale basis and it's very individualized. That's next in line things in these claims much harder to prove, those types of discrimination claims because you quit or because maybe there's trumped up charges or bind up charges, whoever you're voting for. But at the same time it's harder to prove and so it goes down that sliding scale of how do you prove your claim? And if you leave your employment willfully and then come back later and say you were forced out because of these issues, it's going to put you in a worse spot you were forced out because of these issues.
Speaker 1:it's going to put you in a worse spot. So I think what's essential now is that we talk a little bit about what steps a company needs to take when an employee has approached them about accommodations, and what steps the employee needs to take to make sure that they get the accommodations they need and they do it in the proper way. So I think one of the first thing that an employer has to do is they need to determine the essential functions of what the person's position is, and then basically everything flows from there. You want to talk a little bit about some of the factors that when you're advising your clients, what goes into finding out what the essential functions of the position are advising?
Speaker 2:your clients what goes into finding out what the essential functions of the position are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a tough one because I try to consult clients both in a legal, professional aspect as well as an HR professional aspect, to have job descriptions that entail what the essential performing functions of that job are.
Speaker 2:I have one client that does a very good job of this and you can tell very easily from their job description alone what is and is not essential to the job. So obviously, looking at the job is going to depend, or the essential function of the job is going to depend, on what the job is. For example, an administrative assistant is probably going to need to be able to use their hands and ears and eyes to answer phone calls, type, write, make notes, communicate with people, possibly lift boxes of files up to 20, 30 pounds, stuff like that. So if that person has a claim you'd wanna see let's say they've lost their legs in a car accident You're gonna have to factor that in. How does that affect their essential function of the job? And again, it's job specific, position specific and I guess once that's identified we can move to the next step is which? What accommodations can we make, if any, that are reasonable to the employer to assist that person in performing those essential functions of the job.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, this is the second half of this, or the second part of this, and figuring out what kind of accommodations are appropriate, and it's something that has to be done that makes sure that the employer also isn't under undue hardship to provide these types of accommodations, because if it's really impossible in terms of expense or just changing something, you know that's going to well, I guess expenses it's probably one of the most important things to determine whether or not the hardship for the company to provide these accommodations is going to be undue hardship. But that's really the second part of it is figuring that out, and this really requires an assessment to see if the worker can be in a reduced capacity and safely return to work and if the company can reasonably accommodate a worker attempting to return to work.
Speaker 2:Right Now. Do you want to talk about the elements of a claim specifically in California now, or do you want to go through a little bit more of the process?
Speaker 1:I think the process, I think we stick to the process a little bit more and then we'll get to claims that can be brought up once we know exactly what we're dealing with because there's still a lot of questions that go into it and what those accommodations are. I mean, can you do your job with the restrictions? If you can, you should get regular pay, but if you can't do your old job because of the restrictions, what job can you do? You have to figure that out with HR, with your manager and also with your doctor, and there's a chance that you might have to return to a job that pays less until you're fully recovered and off of restrictions.
Speaker 2:Wait a minute, let me take a step back just to put us, because I lost track. I apologize everybody, so let's go step. So the first step on requesting an accommodation, you have a disability or you believe you have a disability first step is telling your employer hey, we need to make some, we need to make some accommodations. Here I have these issues. Uh, so you have that conversation. The next thing then go ahead.
Speaker 1:one thing that's very important is you have to proactively tell your employer that you have a disability and that you need some accommodations because the disability is making your job difficult. Uh, that's one thing that I get a lot with potential clients. They come in and say they have a certain disability and they weren't accommodated, but they never told their employer, they never gave them doctor's note, they never gave anything. Until you really explicitly tell your employer that you have an issue, you are not protected, until you ask for accommodations.
Speaker 2:Yep, and there's a small area of law not small, but there's a small area of law not small, but there's an area of law that discusses how the employer knew or should have known about your disability. A good example that comes to mind is if you walk into work every day, normally you have two shoes on, you're wearing pants or shorts, whatever the uniform or outfit or attire is, and then after some period of time you start coming in with a crutch and you're missing a leg. You don't have to tell the employer that they should know that you're missing a leg. I mean, anybody would know.
Speaker 2:You should still tell your employer, but there's an area of law that if they knew or should have known in case you people are out there or anybody out there is thinking, oh crap, I didn't tell them there's an area of law of knew or should have known. So, anyway, best advice, as Arda said, always tell your employer, because then most of the time employers aren't trying to screw you out of the accommodation. They're trying to work with you within the confines or the bounds and needs of what they can actually do for you. So always tell the employer Once you tell the employer go ahead.
Speaker 1:And I was going to say this is something that this is not like a game that you need to play with your employees as well as the employer. I think that any request like if somebody says I'm disabled, can we adjust something and so I can do my job, you have to kind of broadly interpret that. If you're the employer, you know if somebody is just complaining about not feeling well or something like that, that's not really something that puts you in a position legally that you have to, you know, engage in the interactive process at that point. But do, as an employer, really kind of try to figure out if this person is asking for something so you don't get in trouble. It's better, you know, not to skirt around the issue and try to be technical about things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of times too. And I mean you're going to want to have certification Again, if it's not a physically manifestable condition that you can see with your own two eyes, you're going to want certification as an employer from a doctor or medical professional stating what the disability is and possibly work restrictions and limitations, to make sure you're working with those, to not only accommodate it but to make sure that you might think this person can do X, but they can actually only do Z and you're doing the wrong thing.
Speaker 1:Ryan, in your experience, is there a time where you can terminate somebody who has ADA protection for disability and not worry that you're discriminating against them?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you're getting to the fun of the conversation, which is figuring out when a reasonable accommodation isn't reasonable and is an undue hardship to the employer. Now I'm trying to think off the top of my head, because I can look up the Casey or the jury instruction to find out what that is. But you have to go through the processes of what can be done, no-transcript and clearly that's not reasonable. Then you work with the employee to try to figure out what else to be done can be done if any, but in order to terminate them, the employer has to show that an undue hardship exists for that accommodation. It's not just enough to say that it is an undue hardship. They have to actually show what it is and how it's affecting the business, like difficulty, expense, time, something like that. Another example of the robotic thing I just spoke about is if you need to hire two other people to carry the third person, that might be an undue burden, depending on how much those other people cost to carry that person around. That might be an undue burden, depending on how much those other people cost to carry that person around. Again, these are very crazy examples because I don't want to get into specifics of claims because they get very hairy.
Speaker 2:Some factors when determining undue hardship include how much it costs like I was mentioning, resources and stability of the employer.
Speaker 2:So a mom and pop gas station that has 10 people working for them is going to be an undue hardship, is going to be different to them than it is versus a very large multinational corporation. It'll be also take into account the number of people employed and the effect the accommodation would have on the company's expenses and resources, and again, not just financially. There can be other things, such as the extensive and scope repairs needed to be done to buildings or substantial modifications to be done to the work site or buildings, or how disruptive those changes or accommodations would be to the business itself. And if the, for example, the employer would have to show, well, we have to do all of these things, it's going to be so big in the scope, so substantial, so disruptive that we're not going to be able to make that required accommodation because it would just disrupt our entire business. So those are two good areas and hotly debated and hotly litigated areas of disability law that come into play.
Speaker 1:I think maybe we can come up with a hypothetical here. I mean, let's say a company, let's say an accounting firm, is in an old office building and they're on the third floor and there's no elevator and one of the employees now, you know, due to maybe paralysis or something, needs to work in a wheelchair. Is this company? What can they do? Are they on the hook to, you know? Accommodate so this person in the wheelchair can get up to the second or third floor where the company is. And that's one of the things where you really have to balance everything on cost and things like that. I mean, are they going to have to put an elevator in all these types of things? But then also you have to think a little step further whether or not you can terminate this employee because they can't come to the office. Can they work from home? Is it the type of job?
Speaker 1:Say, accounting is something that you might be able to do from home, but not if you need to meet clients all the time. But then there's all these little factors and wrinkles really come into it on deciding whether or not accommodations cause an undue hardship. And another example I want to ask you about, ryan, is what happens if, let's say, pre-disclosure of the disability, the employee is kind of on track to get fired for performance issues and then they come to you and say they have a disability before you fired them. Are you allowed to discipline or fire them at that point?
Speaker 2:This comes up a lot, not only in the disability context, but in the context of employees trying to find a reason not to get fired. Yes, you're still able to be disciplined or obtain an adverse employment action based on your disability, as long as it's not being as long as the employer is not terminating the employee because of the disability. So for your same example, if I'm gonna terminate employee A because of job performance and because of you know, this is the fifth time I told them not of you, know this is the fifth time I told them not to be tardy, or this is the fourth time I caught them stealing or whatever, and then, right before I'm about to hand them that pink slip or to have that Zoom meeting with them to terminate them, employee A says wait a second, wait a second, I'm disabled. As long as I don't say wait a second, you're disabled, well, now I'm firing you for sure.
Speaker 2:There are valid grounds to terminate the employee. It's not used as like a flippant excuse. But at the same time, california specifically, if anybody raises the disability flag at any time, I'm very, very cautious to advise clients to proceed with terminations until after some sort of investigations conducted or accommodation request is put in there and usually again, in my experience I've seen this a lot more in people not showing up for work as opposed to performance duties, so like, let's say, an assembly line that builds cars, if someone doesn't show up for four days and you can't get a hold of them. But they show up or they respond in the fifth day with a doctor's note saying they broke their arm or they need temporary accommodations because of some injury or because of some illness. That's different than the person showing up on the sixth day intoxicated with wondering why their job is gone.
Speaker 1:Again, this is also why companies need to document, document, document, because if you do have a situation where you have a problem employee that you're thinking about firing and all of a sudden they pop up with a disability, if you don't have documentation of their previous transgressions or things that they were disciplined for, then it's going to be much harder to prove for the company that the firing didn't have anything to do with disability.
Speaker 1:So that's one thing that companies have to keep in mind that documenting even small things like you know, just habitual tardiness it can be very important. Because imagine, you know, you have an employee who's tardy all the time she gets pregnant, comes back to work after her pregnancy leave and then keeps being tardy. Now you have a situation where she's got a very good claim for pregnancy discrimination and discrimination because she has a child and you want to get rid of her because she took leave and things like that. Then you have many more arguments to make about why she's being fired because of her protected status rather than the fact that, no, she's just always late and she was always late before she had a kid or before she was pregnant.
Speaker 2:Yep, and this is where you get into the area of California. You will probably always be sued anyway, so think about a severance agreement. But, yes, agreed, agreed, it's a rough area.
Speaker 1:So let's see, I think this is a good place to take a break. We've been droning on for a while now and we wanna give our sponsors the opportunity to be able to get in there and plug themselves. So here's the end of our first segment and we'll be're back.
Speaker 2:We're back, welcome. Sorry, I'm going to do the sponsors this time here. Okay, go ahead. Welcome back everybody to the employee handbook Ryan Ellis, arda Wildeboer. We want to thank our sponsors, in no particular order the Law Office of Arda Wildeboer and Ryan Ellis Law Corporation for graciously sponsoring our podcast. Yes, we've heard of them before. Yes, they pay us to be here, but we're not endorsing their services, so let's make sure you understand that as we go forward. So, anyway, we're talking before the break.
Speaker 2:I jumped in on this because I want to make sure we hit something from the employer perspective that we're talking before the break about having to accommodate for your employees if they have a disability and they give you a request and you're trying to work with them to make, to make their job. I guess work. But you need to understand that under the ADA, the accommodations that the employee is asking for cannot change the nature of the job itself. So, specifically again, under the ADA, an employer is required to provide reasonable accommodations to its employees with disabilities, as long as those accommodations do not impose an undue hardship we talked about that a little bit earlier on the operation of the business, if the accommodations requested fundamentally alter the nature of the person's job itself or the job role itself. An employer is not obligated to fulfill that specific request.
Speaker 2:For example, if we have a car line manufacturer, somebody is putting truck beds on to trucks and they lose their arms in an accident again not related to work, just for purposes of the example and they come back and say, hey, I want you to accommodate me by doing something, whatever that may be. That's, let's say, reasonable. But now they can't do their job anymore. The employer has a lot of options. One of them is to move them to a new department. One of them is to reassign them to a new responsibility somewhere, maybe again put them to administrative if they can't do the function of the job. But under the ADA they do not need to make that accommodation because doing so would fundamentally alter their job, meaning they can't put truck beds on trucks anymore on the assembly line.
Speaker 1:What if they need an extended time to complete their tasks? What if they're like all right, I can do everything with these accommodations, but I'm still going to need an extra 20 minutes compared to everyone else. Is that something that is protected as well?
Speaker 2:Well, that depends. Some companies will accommodate that, but, however, if it takes you longer to do the same tasks as your coworkers and you in effect do less work an hour, then that's generally considered or not, excuse me that's not generally considered a reasonable accommodation, because you're doing less work and not what's useful, or considered the full job you are being paid to do.
Speaker 1:And what if somebody yeah, that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2:What if you need to take extended breaks Is that something that's going to fall under that category too. For extended time to complete tasks, yes and no. Again, I think it depends on the job, but you can take extended breaks if necessary.
Speaker 1:But again, if you're only working eight hours on a shift let's say an assembly line you're doing less work.
Speaker 1:then we're back to the extended time to complete the tasks because you're not going to be doing the same amount of work as a coworker may be doing difficult, it is for companies and for employees as well, who are requesting accommodations, to get a plan figured out that works for them, because there are so many little caveats and nuances that go into this kind of stuff that there's no black and white kind of way to do things. This is why the interactive process is so important, because everybody's needs are so specific and individual and unique towards them that if you don't do this stuff, then it's an easy, easy, easy window that you're opening for an attorney to jump through with a summons, a complaint to put on your desk. Yep, that's exactly right. Well said, I think maybe we could go over. You know just the basic elements for a disability discrimination claim. Just to put it, to crystallize it for everybody what, what it means under the law.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So my good lead-in was are to assume. You know someone's been talking to you about it. They need some help at work. You know they had some issues with disability, whether they've been experiencing them for a while or just been thrust into a disability. Their employer has worked with them and essentially the employer said look, employee, no, we're not going to, we're not doing that, we're not going to help you out here, and they kind of put the employee to make a decision either do the job or we're going to fire you. What, what are you doing that? What are you going to tell this person and how would you handle it?
Speaker 1:Well, the first thing you have to do is determine whether or not there's direct evidence that's the motive for the employer's conduct and if that evidence was related to the physical or mental condition that the employee has brought up and remember, the employee has to bring it up, they have to bring it up and say that they have a condition that is making it difficult for them to do their job and that they need some sort of change to their work so they can do their job.
Speaker 1:So that's the first thing need some sort of change to their work so they can do their job. So that's the first thing. So was the disability a substantial motivating reason for the employer to maybe either fire or refuse to hire or discipline the plaintiff? And if that's the case, then the plaintiff has to also show that they were harmed somehow. So if they got fired, they would be harmed because they're no longer getting income and that the defendant's conduct was a substantial factor in causing the plaintiff's harm. Yes, they are the ones that decided to fire the person because of their disability. So that would be a substantial factor in causing the plaintiff's harm. So again, that is, the elements that you're looking for that create a prima facie case for disability discrimination.
Speaker 2:And then so let's say you've proven your prima facie case, prima facie case, prime-e-face-ee. However you pronounce it, depending on what part of the country you're from, you may have a different annotation to the word. You've proven your claim. You've been successful, whether it's in your demand letter that you think is successful or to a jury. What sort of remedies from a plaintiff's perspective does a potential plaintiff or plaintiff have relating to disability claims?
Speaker 1:Well, there's easy ones and there's hard ones. The easy ones are things like back pay. Hard ones. The easy ones are things like back pay, which could be. You know, if you were somewhere for 10 years and you should have been getting a raise because you're going to get moved into management, you know, and your disability was the reason they fired you instead of giving you a promotion, then back pay is one of the things that you would be entitled to, Front pay as well. Then back pay is one of the things that you would be entitled to, Front pay as well, which is higher pay again, from the raise you should have been entitled to the value of your lost benefits, how much pension benefits you would have gotten. Those things are all kind of easy to calculate. If you would have been at the company for 10 years more, how much would you have earned for your pension? And then we get into the things that are much harder to prove and much harder to be successful on when you're an attorney suing a company for disability discrimination.
Speaker 1:Those are emotional distress and punitive damages. And I just want to take a kind of a step a little bit further into the process, talking about emotional distress and the way that it's viewed within the entire litigation process, Because there are several steps in litigation before you get to a jury, and one of those is mediation, and an important thing to really take into account is if you're a plaintiff's attorney, or if you're say or I would say it's better to talk about it as if you're a plaintiff and what your expectations are. If you're a plaintiff and you're going into a mediation, one of the things that is almost always going to be off the table is going to be emotional distress. If you're in a mediation, defense attorneys will not even consider emotional distress. Emotional distress is basically something that everybody claims. If it's a car accident, people are going to want to complain about emotional distress. Oh, IIED. It's one of those Google things that people find out about when they're trying to figure out what they can get in their lawsuit. Oh, emotional distress. I was emotionally distressed.
Speaker 2:For all the people out there. Iied is intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sorry about that. That's the shorthand way of saying it. Iied Intentional infliction of emotional distress. If you're in a car accident, the key word here is accident and then intentional infliction of emotional distress as intent. So if it's an accident, it can't be intentional. So you can't get intentional infliction of emotional distress as intense. So if it's an accident, it can't be intentional. So you can't get intentional affliction of emotional distress, say in an accident case.
Speaker 1:In a work case it's going to be again a lot more nuanced because were they doing this because they intentionally wanted to hurt you emotionally and make things harder on you and make it worse? Or are they doing it to save money? Or are they doing it? You know what is the reason that they fired you and this is something that usually goes to a jury for a jury to be able to award because of the difficulty of putting a value on emotional distress, especially early on in litigation. You know, when you get to mediation, many times you haven't done a lot of things like have an expert on to talk about emotional distress like a psychologist, because that's something that you want to do when you're ramping up for trial. So again, in a mediation it's almost always off the table because it's so difficult to put a value on emotional distress, and so most of what you're going to get paid for is, you know, hard numbers like the value of your benefits or back pay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so let's do another example. Let's say you're fired for disability, disability claim you're fired. When they say back pay, you mean pay you should have received. Right Front pay is, if you're fired on day 10, any pay forward that you would be entitled to receive up to a certain point in time. Then you have your emotional damages and your punitive damages.
Speaker 2:Now we talked about intentional affliction. You talked about intentional affliction. There's also, as you know, a claim for negligent affliction of emotional distress or someone knew or should have known that wasn't going to cause that person harm. And just that is, I think, a whole other set of podcasts to talk about that one issue.
Speaker 2:But just to highlight the fact that if you speak about depression and anxiety and other emotional disabilities or emotional potential damages, when you, when you fire somebody or terminate somebody or was it adverse employment action towards somebody who has a mental disability, those negligent infliction of emotional distress claims get even more tricky. Because if you knew they had this mental disability, you knew or should have known that anything mental related with that person would have compounded their injury or potentially could have compounded their injury. So if someone wanted to highlight on there to be very, very careful when it comes to mental distress, mental disability claims, you want to make sure you do what you can as an employer to avoid those and try to accommodate to the best, best ability possible but again, those things like proving proving that kind of stuff is very much testimony heavy, yes, and so again in a mediation they're not going to really want to deal with that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:you know that that's going to be something that only a jury can decide whether or not it's reasonable to award those and and you're you're going to push for it as a plaintiff's attorney and definitely try to include that in your negotiation. But again, it's something that's almost always a non-starter with defense attorneys when you're in a mediation, as well as trying to get attorney's fees as a plaintiff, they're not going to want to hear any threats about your attorney fees once you win the claim in trial and they're not going to want to hear anything about emotional distress. And one other thing that they may or may not want to hear about, depending on your claim, is punitive damages. And Ryan, you want to talk a little bit about what punitive damages?
Speaker 1:are first of all, and what's the situation where you would actually be worried about this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, punitive damages are almost exactly what they sound like, which are to punish damages enforced or levied against a party, to punish that party for something they have done. You see this in the news a lot for fraud cases, yes, but failure to disclose cases, yes, but situations in the employment context. They also come up in a jury verdict for, let's say, wrongful termination. We'll use it in the disability context. If we use one of your examples from earlier today where you talked about harassing a coworker because of a disability, whether they had the capacity or whether you screwed with their wheelchair and blocked a ramp or something, if let's say that the person that a co-worker because of a disability whether they had the capacity, or whether you screwed with their wheelchair and blocked a ramp or something, let's say that the person that blocked the ramp and messed with the person's wheelchair who was disabled was the owner of the company or a manager. If they did that intentionally and they continue to do it and the person was either terminated or lost their job because of that and they sued for it, a jury would probably look at those actions and think that the employer is due to some punishment, meaning that a jury of that plaintiff's peers would think that the employer took those actions towards that person intentionally and therefore because of those intentional acts and the intentional conduct that the employer should be punished.
Speaker 2:I've seen I mean we talked about this last podcast punitive damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 2:And again to me, a hundred million dollars, no big deal, write a check, it's all fine.
Speaker 2:But most people obviously I can't write a check for that, but most people, if not all people in the world, would think a hundred or $200 million addition to a judgment is is a lot of money and that would severely punish most if not all humans and most if not all corporations.
Speaker 2:In some regard, even a billion dollar company, a $200 million judgment is would be 20%, so that's a lot of money to pay. So these come up in intentional contexts. These come up in situations where there's willful and wanting conduct that's just to a normal person, seems grossly egregious, out of line, clearly intentional. It's rarer and rarer in employment context because it's hard to prove um in most cases, but again the examples we talked about earlier, you could definitely have an issue for punitive damages, especially, like you said too, when employers aren't keeping documentation, they're not disciplining their managers, they're not following their own policies and possibly even engaging in the conduct that caused this issue. So punitive damages can be a mother and I highly, highly, highly suggest as an employment defense attorney to demur or try to get those claims dismissed because of lack of intent, because they can add several multiples above judgments that should be avoided.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that could be really the thing that ends a company if you get into a situation where there's punitive damages, and that's why settling claims before they get to trial is always really the best move, because you want to take the consequences out of the hands of the third party to be dishing out. And it's funny you say that could end a company.
Speaker 2:It does I mean I don't care how much funny you say that it could end a company. It does. I mean I don't care how much money you have, $200 million or $400 million a lot of money, like I said. But part of the analysis of a punitive damages claim takes into account the financial stability and impact of the defendant. So in theory it would never destroy a company because if you have a $10 billion company, there's going to be a certain limitation or cap on what the punitive damages legally could be. But again, I don't care how big of a company you are, a $400 million verdict punitive damages verdict is insane.
Speaker 2:So the laws not always follow the laws. We have a lot of judges in the United States, a lot of judges in California. I have dealt with a lot of them myself and I have comments on each one of them. Of judges in California, I have dealt with a lot of them myself and I have comments on each one of them. But sometimes those judges may not follow the rules or may not enforce motions to limit judgments or to dismiss claims, even though the law clearly says they should be.
Speaker 1:So it's one of those things, like I already said, try to resolve their claim before it gets filed and, if not, try to resolve the claim in mediation only because you never know what's going to happen in mediation only because you never know what's going to happen and a lot of times punitive damages are things that, again, this is things that are always claimed by the defendant to be taken out of context or it was in the wrong way, or we were joking around and everything was hilarious, but it just goes on for an incredibly long amount of time, or the management has been informed of it and they let it go on and let it go on and then it finally leads to say, you know, one final crescendo of discriminatory behavior or just an incident that really breaks the straw, that breaks the camel's back and again.
Speaker 1:So that's why stopping behavior really early on, as management and HR of somebody who says they're being harassed, and taking it seriously is so important, because, again, these are things that could just be things that people think are inside jokes or hilarious, and those are the ones that really eventually lead to awards for punitive damages.
Speaker 1:Right Go ahead. Well, I was just thinking what else do you want to go over?
Speaker 2:I have an example that I want to read from the worldwide Internet. Okay, so it's about ADA accommodation. We have an employee again all hypothetical. We have an employee who has been employed at the company for about six months. The employee misses work frequently or winds at work due to leg pain, where the person is insufferable. It's a female, so she is insufferable, and then just leaves the work for the day.
Speaker 2:This person called the company employee, called the company to talk options and then within the first 30 seconds yelled at the HR person for discrimination and that if she was fired or disciplined for not being there due to her medical condition, that she would essentially sue and claim that she had a lawsuit against her former employer for a similar that she had to lawsuit against her former employer for a similar. The HR person on the phone discussed with the employee ADA reasonable accommodation process and options and provided the employee with documentation to begin that process. The next day the employee came in and complained to her manager about the paperwork she received. That sounds like a great employee. The employee again is very vocal about an active lawsuit with her former employer in the state of California.
Speaker 2:The employee is after that phone call and after complaining to her manager, is now acting on at work. This company is a doctor's office in a different state than California and the employee is doing the bare minimum and leaving her work I guess her workstation to go and lay down in patient rooms all day, therefore making the room unusable by patients. And, as of the date of this internet posting, this person has not returned any of the paperwork to the employer and although it was just given to her a few days ago and the HR department did reach out to this employee asking and checking in what's going on, without a response. I have a lot of thoughts on this one, but, arda, do you want to start off with your initial thoughts on this potential plaintiff claimant client of yours?
Speaker 1:Yes, that I will not be taking this case because this person sounds very difficult to deal with. But yeah, I think this is a really good example because the first thing is that it highlights the emotional nature of these types of claims. People who have disabilities are rightly very protective of their privacy and very protective of their just kind of feeling that they're able to contribute and to produce and to be somebody that can be an important part of a workforce or a company. And so when people are questioning whether or not you have the abilities or the skills to still compete and do your job at work with this disability, they can become very defensive, and rightly so. I mean, nobody wants to feel like they're less than or that something that they're dealing with medically is going to make them unable to work or make them feel less valued.
Speaker 1:So that's a reason you get a lot of lawsuits and that a lot of claims are actually rejected by, say, the EEOC, because they're emotionally motivated and they don't necessarily rise to the level of discrimination by an employer, because people get very, very offended when they say they have a disability and then they're asked to say prove it with a doctor's note or, you know, really, come up with the essential accommodations they need, because if you can do something without an accommodation and still do the job, then it's not an essential accommodation. It's not a reasonable accommodation if you do your job without it. So those types of discussions, people get very, very emotional, and so that's something to keep in mind. This person sounds like they were very, very emotional and reacted from getting any type of pushback or any type of questioning from the employer. Ryan, is there any way that you prep the companies that you work with for this type of situation?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, this all starts with good policies and procedures Again, an employee handbook and a good HR department that is not afraid to do their job and most aren't. They're not afraid, but dealing with employees like this is very difficult because they are unpredictable and you have to balance on one from a company perspective. You have to balance the craz from a company perspective. You have to balance the craziness of this employee, or or seeming craziness, this employee, when you don't know what's going on. You know the whole picture, what's going on well, at the same time, the needs of the company, and you know you need a body, you need to have someone working with patients or whatever this person does. If I, if I got this across my desk the first that I would laugh because not because it's funny, but because it happens all the time, especially with the newer generation of workers coming into the workforce, being more assertive and demanding of things that they believe they're entitled to versus things that they might might have to earn or use leave for. So first I would tell the person the HR professionals document everything. If they have the ability to, I'd have the HR professional bring somebody else in from HR to deal with the work performance issues, such as leaving the post and laying in bed all day, or laying in the patient's bed not doing their job, and then another, then this HR professional, to deal with the accommodation. You want to again, because of the fact everything's in writing you want to make sure you have a clear documentation of the whole process the day you provided the accommodation paperwork, the requests you made for medical records or vacation from a doctor talking about the interactive process, things you are asking for from that employee to make sure that they tell you what they need, so you can then engage in that process to determine what a reasonable accommodation may be. And if the person can't work, obviously don't have them laying in a patient room while they send them home. Document everything, offer them whether they're entitled to FMLA or in California, california leave I'm not aware of the example if they are or not, but this person may be entitled to that leave. Give them any and all paperwork you can to let them know what leave they have, if they have PTO, if they have sick leave, whatever. Here's what you got Work with it, you know. Come back with it with the letter from your doctor, um, and if this person's not being communicative and not being responsive. Press, not not in a way where it becomes an undue burden on the employee, but every few days check in, say hey, and again, assuming this person's not out on leave if you have paperwork to them, say hey, uh, you know it's been two days, you called off's, fine, but please bring a doctor's note or reminding you. Here's the accommodation paperwork. At the end of the day, you can't force somebody to give you doctor's notes. If they can't help people, they don't help themselves.
Speaker 2:One of my good friends, or our good friends, said that and this is one of the great example. And there's also a lot of internet, I guess, resources for what accommodations can be made for certain jobs. But again, time off, like you said, is not an accommodation. Time off would be more of a leave thing that the doctor can say yes, this person was out on leave for this medical issue or disability and that's something that their letter will certify to you that you can use in the disability investigation as well as interactive process.
Speaker 2:But it sounds like no matter what, this employee is going to sue you and you need to be prepared for that. So again, document everything possibly. Um offer the, depending on how it works shakes out with the providing documentation for disability and whatever leave this person has and the needs of your job. I would tell the employer to possibly think about, uh, setting some money aside to pay this person to go away, some kind of severance agreement, because it's going to happen and my bill, I guarantee, will be much larger than the bill you could pay to that person to possibly go away and settle their claims by way of a severance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and really that's the lesson is that even if you have the perfect policies, even if you do everything right, even if you have the most sympathetic, slash, empathetic HR department and the best managers with the best training, people will take things the wrong way and and sue you no matter what, even if you do things right. And that's just the reality of what it is. I mean, many times they will just see the entire situation from a completely different perspective that the company does. And a lot of times in discovery and things like that, you'll find that the claims that the plaintiff made, not always, of course, but are just very much tunnel vision of what they want to see as them being discriminated against without really seeing what a reasonable accommodation is.
Speaker 1:And reasonable doesn't necessarily mean what the person affected thinks is reasonable, you know, that's partly, of course, part of the equation. But it has to be reasonable according to the doctor, according to the company, according to the person. Everybody has to come together to decide what is reasonable in this case, you know, based on the very, very specific circumstances. So that is just going to mean that somebody who is unhappy generally and having an emotional response is going to sue you no matter what, and they might not find an attorney, though, but they might mean to sue you no matter what and make a complaint to an agency if they can't find an attorney, so there's just no way to just be fully protected against this type of thing happening.
Speaker 2:Yep agreed and it's really just leaning on HR to document everything. Follow the processes and procedures you have inside the company. Reach out to legal both internal legal counsel or general counsel and outside legal, if you need to raise it to your manager, raise it to HR director, raise it to C-suite, Because these litigious issues, these issues can become very litigious and can get very expensive and I'm not talking about losing by way of a judgment, but legal fees. So it's just, it's better off, speaking from, like, an HR professional perspective, bring it to superiors, make sure you have a documented process and keep it all in writing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because they're going to ask you about everything when you're deposed. If you're an HR person who's in charge of something like this and there's a lawsuit, get ready to explain why you didn't document things. Get ready to explain why you didn't do X, y or Z, why you didn't talk to the other employees, why you didn't have the manager do X, y and Z. What is your training? What does the handbook say? When's the last time you read the handbook? When is the last time the handbook was updated? Why are your policies and procedures not reflecting X, y and Z? These are all things that you're going to have to answer, and and so those are the reasons why you want to document everything, so you can go in there and really just give a good picture of how the company handled this, instead of not having all this documentation, which automatically just makes it seem like the company dropped the ball agreed very well said um and on that I don't think I'm going to be able to say anything better than that.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there's anything that we didn't get to in the example, but yeah, sleeping in the patient room, that's a big no-no. I would not take that case. You can't just go to work and say you're disabled and do whatever the hell you want and you're immune to any type the hell you want and and you know you're, you're, you know, immune to any type of consequences. Just remember that. But also remember, as a company, you can do everything right and still get sued yep, especially in california yeah, especially in california.
Speaker 1:And yeah, a lot of people know that the company is just going to settle. Is it unfair? Yes, but as we said in I don't know episode, episode two, three, four or something.
Speaker 2:Every episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, people can sue you for anything and they will Yep, so on that very positive note.
Speaker 1:You know very, very positive note that anybody can sue you for anything at any time. We are going to sign off for this week. Can sue you for anything at any time. We are going to sign off for this week. A big thanks to our sponsors, brian Ellis Law Corporation, who we are not endorsing, and Art of Wilderboard Law Office of Art of Wilderboard definitely not endorsing him either, because this is an entertainment podcast and not giving any legal advice to anybody.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yeah, Thank you all for listening. We're on our way to the episode 10 coming up in a few episodes. We appreciate all of you and look forward to hearing, hearing you, seeing you no, not even we don't see you either Looking forward to having you listen to us rant and talk about employment issues, HR issues and legal issues on the next podcast.
Speaker 1:All right, goodbye everyone, thank you.
