Category Archives: Whistleblower

How to Save Emails for an Employment Lawsuit – Pt. 2

In this video employment lawyer Branigan Robertson details how and why people should save important emails from work if they suspect they are the victim of unlawful retaliation, harassment, or discrimination. Mr. Robertson explains when employees should start saving emails, what emails they should save, several strategies on how to save them, and why emails can increase the value of your case.

This video is Part 2 in a four-part series called “How to Document Bad Behavior at Work.” The first video was about taking good notes while at work. This video focuses exclusively on emails. The next video is about taking company documents. The final video is all about text messages. All of these videos are very important so if you’re still employed I recommend you watch all of them! Here are links to each video:

Why Emails are Key to Winning Employment Cases

Emails are the most common type of evidence in employment cases. That makes so much sense because most of our modern workplace communication is done via email. But so many clients call our office after being fired and they didn’t keep any documents! This is terrible as it makes it much harder to pursue your case without any supporting documentation. While it doesn’t ruin the case, it makes it much harder to pursue justice.

By their very nature, employment lawsuits have a lot of moving parts. There are bad bosses, their bad behavior, the treacherous coworkers, more bad behavior, the witnesses who see it all, and the jury that hears the case. Of course, there’s the judge that instructs the jury, and the lawyer that fights for the rights of his client—the worker. And when it comes down to winning nothing or scoring a million-dollar award, time and again, it’s the humble email that makes or break a case. Simply put, it’s important that workers learn how to save emails for a potential lawsuit.

In this video employment lawyer Branigan Robertson details how and why people should save important emails from work if they suspect they are the victim of unlawful retaliation, harassment or discrimination. Mr. Robertson also explains when employees should start saving emails, several strategies on how to save them, and why emails can increase the value of a case.

Why Save Emails in the First Place? 

Legally speaking, it’s always better if you can show that something bad happened at work as opposed to simply alleging that something bad happened. Evidence such as emails can drastically improve the strength of your case, and in some situations, might even quickly bring the employer to the negotiating table.

One of the most frustrating types of calls our office receives involves an employee who was treated poorly by a coworker or supervisor. The coworker was harassed for months—maybe because of religious practices, their ethnicity, or because they refused to do something illegal. The caller tells us about several different incidents. The caller tells us how they complained via email to HR. But when we ask if they still have a copy of that email, they tell us they don’t. At this point steam shoots out of our ears.

The caller will often suggest that we can just simply obtain that information during discovery. While this is a possibility, there’s a lot that can happen before a case gets to the discovery phase. In a worst-case scenario, unscrupulous employers might make important evidence disappear.

When Should You Start Saving Emails? 

In general, you’ll want to start saving emails once you decide you are being treated unlawfully by a coworker or your boss.  This leads us to another question that can be difficult (though no less important) to answer: when is the law being broken?

When asking this question, it’s important to remember that there is a lot of bad behavior that employers and coworkers can get away with that is unfortunately perfectly legal. There is a significant difference between unfair and illegal behavior. 

The California Fair Employment and Housing Act states that it is unlawful for an employer to harass or discriminate against an employee due to several characteristics including race, gender, sexuality, pregnancy status, age (over 40), military status, national origin, gender identity, among others. The law also protects employees who witness their coworkers being harassed and speak up about it. 

For the sake of simplicity, let’s just assume that you suspect you are being treated unlawfully. Ask yourself the following questions:

  1. Is the behavior significant (i.e., were you called a vulgar racist slur, did you experience unwanted touching by a manger or coworker, were you told you would be fired if the boss found out you are pregnant)?
  2. Has the incident or behavior significantly impacted your job?

If the answer to these questions is yes, it might be time to reach out to our office for a free consultation.

How Should You Save Emails for a Potential Lawsuit?

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of how to save emails for a potential lawsuit, let’s first look at a couple methods that should be avoided. For instance, it’s a bad idea to save the emails on a work computer or mobile device. Even if the emails are stored in a ‘hidden’ folder, once the employer catches wind of what’s happening, the employee might be locked out of the device in which case they will lose access to the emails. It’s also a bad idea to send work emails to a personal email account. This potentially opens the employee’s personal email account to discovery down the road. Trust us, you don’t want a defense attorney sleuthing through your personal account. 

Here are four methods for saving emails for a potential lawsuit that are better:

  1. Print them out and take them home. Printing work emails will leave a substantially smaller digital footprint making it difficult for the employer to figure out what’s going on.
  2. Send the email via PDF or similar format to an independent email account set up solely to receive the work emails. It’s recommended the employee use a free, web-based service such as Gmail or Yahoo.
  3. Take a picture of the email with a cell phone. This is a less preferred method but is also less likely to leave a digital footprint than the previous methods.  That said, it can cause your attorney substantial frustration if he or she must figure out how to put hundreds of pixelated cell phone pictures into chronological order.
  4. Keep a descriptive log of the emails. This method requires the employee to handwrite or digitally type descriptions of the important emails. This method can be done to avoid leaving a digital footprint entirely. While it’s not as good as the previous methods, keeping a log can still help your attorney to figure out which emails need to be requested during discovery. Such a log can also serve as a record if the employer deletes incriminating emails.

Contact Our Office for a Free Consultation

If you’ve been mistreated, harassed or wrongfully terminated, give our office a call. There is no charge for Mr. Robertson to review the facts of your case. If Mr. Robertson believes that you have a case worth pursuing, he generally represents clients on a contingency basis. This means there are no out-of-pocket expenses, and Mr. Robertson is paid with a portion of the settlement or judgment at the case’s conclusion. Give our office a call to find out if Mr. Robertson can help you.

If you would rather watch this video on YouTube, click here.

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Filed under Age, Defamation, Disability, Discrimination, Employment Contract, FEHA, Harassment, Leave of Absence, Pregnancy, Race, Religion, Retaliation, Settlements, Severance, Wage & Hour, Whistleblower, Wrongful Termination

How to Document Bad Behavior at Work – Pt. 1

This video details how employees like you should properly document bad behavior at work so you can protect yourself down the road if legal action becomes necessary.

In the video, employment attorney Branigan Robertson talks in depth about when you should take notes, what they will be used for, what you should write down, three strategies that are best for how you should write them down, and he discusses best practices.

This video gives simple guidelines that might dramatically help you preserve key evidence (facts, dates, witnesses, events, and occurrences) that will be important later on. If your boss, manager, or coworker is treating you poorly, this video is an essential watch.

This video is part 1 in a four-part series called “How to Document Bad Behavior at Work.”

This video series is especially important if you feel like your legal issues fall within one of the following categories:

If you would rather watch this video on YouTube, click here.

Be sure to watch the whole video for Branigan’s in deep dive into this important issue. If you prefer, you can read the rest of this blog to get a general overview. But be sure to watch the video for full understanding.

Is the Bad Behavior Unfair, or Unlawful?

Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad behavior that happens in the workspace that’s perfectly legal. For an attorney like Branigan Robertson to pursue a case, he must believe there has been a violation of state or federal law. In California, §12940 of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) states that it is a violation of law for an employer to discriminate against an employee based on several characteristics. These include race, religion, gender identity, sexuality, national origin, disability and several other classes. 

Harassment of a protected person rises to a violation of law when the bad behavior is severe or pervasive enough to alter the working environment. If you believe that you are being harassed, the quality of the notes you take can help an attorney to determine if you have a case worth pursuing.

Simplicity is Key

The first thing to keep in mind when documenting bad behavior at work is that you must keep things simple. Remember that you might be presenting your case to a jury of your peers at some point. You don’t want a defense attorney holding up pages and pages of scribbled notes in which you document your bosses’ every little misstep, perceived hypocrisy or office snub. Furthermore, you’ll want to refrain from psychoanalyzing the boss—even if he or she is a narcissistic tyrant. 

Poorly compiled notes have the potential to make you come across to the jury as a whiner, or worse. When taking notes, focus on the significant events, which by their very nature are rare. These are the events you suspect are unlawful and impact your work:

  • ­Boss called me to his office, closed the door and rubbed my shoulders.
  • Devon threatened to hit me and used a racial slur.
  • Supervisor Sara made a joke at office lunch that she only promotes white people.

The Five W’s

Once you’ve decided you need to document something at work, keep it to the Five W’s:

  • Who
  • What
  • When
  • Where
  • Witnesses

People who call our office often struggle to remember simple but key details. They’ll begin the call by telling us about the hostile work environment they’re in and all the laws that are being broken. But when asked for the date when the illegal behavior happened, or who was there when it happened, these same callers’ minds’ go blank. If you’re documenting the significant issues, be sure you can answer the five W’s.

Set Up a Free Email Account

If you’re documenting bad behavior at work, you’ll want to have an email account set up where you can email and store your notes. This ensures that the notes have timestamp information that will corroborate your facts. It’s important you don’t store this information in a company email account, or your personal email account. In the former case, your employer probably has software or other ways of monitoring the information you store in a company account. In the latter situation you don’t want to trigger discovery that could result in a a defense lawyer sleuthing through your personal information.

Call an Attorney

If you’ve watched Mr. Robertson’s videos on documenting bad behavior at work and feel that you can relate a little too much to the discussion, it might be time to give our office a call. 

While Mr. Robertson doesn’t generally take on cases while a person is still employed, he will review the facts of your case for free. When Mr. Robertson does take a case, he generally does so on a contingency basis. This means the client doesn’t pay for legal services out of pocket. Attorney’s fees are paid with a portion of proceeds at the conclusion of the case. Give the law office of Branigan Robertson a call to find out if he can help.

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Can an Attorney Save Your Job if You Have a Legal Issue?

We get calls all the time from folks who are still employed but they are facing a significant legal issue at work. Whether it is harassment, retaliation, or something else, folks want to know if a lawyer can step in and help them. We get this question so often that Mr. Robertson decided to make a video about it.

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Filed under Abuse, Age, Defamation, Disability, Discrimination, Harassment, Pregnancy, Privacy, Race, Religion, Retaliation, Whistleblower, Wrongful Termination

What are the Legal Implications of Quitting Your Job?

What are the legal implications of quitting your job? Can you collect unemployment? Severance? What if you have a case and you quit (vs letting them fire you), will you still be able to take action? I answer all of those questions in this video.

My office gets a lot of calls from people who quit and still want to take action. This video details the critical things that lawyers look at in this situation.

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Filed under Age, Defamation, Disability, Discrimination, Employment Contract, FEHA, Harassment, Health Care, Layoffs, Leave of Absence, Pregnancy, Privacy, Race, Religion, Retaliation, Settlements, Severance, Wage & Hour, Whistleblower, Wrongful Termination

How to Complain to Human Resources the Right Way

As with all things in life, making a complaint at work is a risk. If you complain to human resources the wrong way, you might get fired (it happens far more often than people think). That is why I took the time to make a video about the correct way to complain to HR.

This video will explain the five things you need to know before you complain about your issue at work. It also covers how HR will react to your complaint and what you should expect if they conduct an “investigation.”

If you found this to be helpful, please leave a comment below.

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Filed under Abuse, Age, Defamation, Disability, Discrimination, Employment Contract, FEHA, Harassment, Health Care, Layoffs, Leave of Absence, Pregnancy, Privacy, Race, Religion, Retaliation, Settlements, Severance, Verdicts, Wage & Hour, Whistleblower, Wrongful Termination

What does being an “at-will employee” actually mean? Can I get fired for “any reason”?

This is a very common question. At-will employment does not mean that the company can fire you for any reason they want. That is incorrect. In this video, employment attorney Branigan Robertson explains the at-will doctrine and how it actually works.

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Filed under Abuse, Age, Defamation, Disability, Discrimination, Employment Contract, FEHA, Harassment, Health Care, Layoffs, Leave of Absence, Pregnancy, Privacy, Race, Religion, Retaliation, Settlements, Severance, Verdicts, Wage & Hour, Whistleblower, Wrongful Termination