You reported something. Then everything at work changed.

$41,098,250: Carmell v. Janet’s Enterprises, Inc., et al., San Bernardino County Superior Court, February 2025. Workplace retaliation, constructive discharge, and whistleblower retaliation. Ranked #2 on Top Verdict’s “Top 10 Labor & Employment Verdicts in California, 2025” and #14 on “Top 20 Verdicts in California, 2025,” attributed to Taylor E. DeRosa with Gregory G. Rizio and Daren H. Lipinsky of Rizio Lipinsky Heiting, PC. Obtained as trial counsel while at Rizio Lipinsky Heiting, PC.

Every case is different. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome; each result depends on the specific facts and law of that matter.

Retaliation is when an employer punishes you for doing something the law protects. The protected act comes first. The punishment follows.

Labor Code §1102.5 is the centerpiece. It protects employees who disclose information they reasonably believe shows a violation of a statute, rule, or regulation. Three features make it broad:

• The report can be internal. Telling a supervisor, or anyone with authority to investigate, counts. You do not have to go to an agency.
• You can be wrong. Protection turns on whether your belief was reasonable, not on whether a violation occurred.
• It covers refusing to participate in unlawful activity, and giving information to a public body.

Labor Code §1102.6 sets the burden of proof, and it favors employees more than most expect. Your protected activity need only be a contributing factor in the adverse action, not the only reason, not the main one. The employer must then prove by clear and convincing evidence that it would have taken the identical action for independent reasons anyway. That is a demanding standard.

One situation often triggers several statutes. Other routes: §98.6, for wage complaints, covered under wage and hour claims; §6310, for health and safety concerns; FEHA §12940(h), for opposing discrimination or harassment; and §132a, for workers’ compensation claims.

Protected activity: conduct the law shields from punishment: reporting suspected illegality, refusing to break the law, requesting an accommodation, filing a wage claim. More terms in the glossary.

Most people picture a termination. The pattern that walks through the door is slower and harder to name.

An adverse employment action is any action that materially affects the terms, conditions, or privileges of your employment. California reads that broadly, and it does not require losing your job.

If your manager cut your hours from 38 to 12 the week after you emailed HR about unpaid overtime, that is an adverse action.

If your review went from “exceeds expectations” to a written warning a month after your safety complaint, the timing itself is evidence.

Sometimes the pressure is meant to make you quit.

Constructive discharge: a resignation the law treats as a termination, because the employer knowingly created or permitted conditions so intolerable that a reasonable person would have had no real choice but to leave. Unpleasantness is not enough: the conditions must be aggravated or continuous.

The details matter more than the label. See also wrongful termination.

Deadlines depend on the facts of your situation. Do not rely on this page to calculate yours. Some situations start more than one clock at once.

Employers rarely announce the real reason. These cases are built from timing, inconsistency, and documents.

Timing. A short gap between the protected activity and the adverse action is powerful circumstantial evidence. Since January 1, 2024, California law recognizes a rebuttable presumption of retaliation when certain adverse actions follow protected activity within 90 days.

Inconsistency. When the stated reason changes (performance, then restructuring, then attendance) the shift itself becomes evidence, as does a coworker who did the same thing and kept their shifts, or a write-up dated three days after your email.

Worth doing while the record is fresh:

1. Write down what you reported, when, to whom, and how, with dates.
2. Keep your own copies of pay stubs, schedules, reviews, and warnings. Do not forward confidential company files to yourself; that can create a separate problem.
3. Note who saw it, and ask about deadlines before a window closes.

That is general information about how these cases work, not advice about your situation.

There is no formula, and no honest answer before someone has read your documents. Depending on the proof, recovery can include:

• Lost wages and benefits
• Emotional distress damages, often the larger part of the claim
• Civil penalties up to $10,000 per employee, per violation under §1102.5(f)
• Punitive damages, where the conduct meets the malice, oppression, or fraud standard
• Attorney’s fees

Nothing can be promised.

Taylor DeRosa has spent nearly a decade in employee-side litigation, most of it at Rizio Lipinsky Heiting, PC, where retaliation and constructive discharge sat at the center of the work, including the Carmell verdict above, obtained as trial counsel while at that firm. He has been selected to the Super Lawyers® Rising Stars list, Employment Litigation – Plaintiff, 2025–2027, and served on the Board of Directors of the Orange County Trial Lawyers Association (2025).

Boutique by design. Nothing about your file gets learned twice.

A §1102.5 claim goes directly to Superior Court; a FEHA retaliation claim starts with a California Civil Rights Department complaint, which is filed online rather than in person. Cases from this region are typically filed in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, or in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, or Riverside Superior Court where the employer sits there, with federal claims heard in the Central District of California in Santa Ana or Riverside.

We represent employees across Orange County, Los Angeles County, and the Inland Empire, including Irvine, Anaheim, Ontario, and Riverside.