Employment Lawyers Group Services

Fired After Family Medical Leave

If you were fired due to taking Family Medical Leave, or your employer did not reinstate you after you took Family Medical Leave call (310) 842-8600 to speak to our Family Medical Leave Act lawyers.

Legal cases involving job terminations due to Family Medical Leave often occur when:

1. The employer fails to reinstate the employee to their job after they took Family Medical Leave
2. The employer claims the employee can be fired because they exhausted Family Medical Leave, but the employee’s medical condition qualified as a disability, or they were entitled to more than twelve weeks off because they were pregnant
3. The employer gives the employee’s job away following the employee first taking off for Family Medical Leave
4. The employer tires of intermittent Family Medical Leave absences and fires the employee

Who Is Eligible For Family Leave?

The California version of the Federal Family Medical Leave Act is called the California Family Leave Rights Act abbreviated as, “CFRA.” Both the Federal Family Medical Leave Act, abbreviated, “FMLA” and the California Act apply to:

• Employees whom have worked for their employer more than 1,250 hours during the last twelve months
• Employees whom are employed by employers with 50 or more employees for FMLA and 5 for California Law
• Employees not in the to 10% of the wage earners at the employer
• The employee is absent due to a serious medical condition
• The employee takes less than twelve weeks of leave during a calendar year

All of the above prerequisites for CFRA/FMLA can be waived by the employer. There are some employers whom have less than fifty employees and provide CFRA/FMLA coverage to their employees. There are also some employers whom allow employees to take more than twelve weeks for CFRA/FMLA leave and/or they include baby bonding in their CFRA/FMLA coverage. Certainly, an employee should not count on any of these rare exceptions being made to what the California Family Rights Leave Act or Family Medical Leave Act covers.

Common issues in CFRA/FMLA cases involve:

• Employers claiming they never received oral or written notice of the employee’s need for a leave qualifying as CFRA/FMLA leave
• Absences to provide mere moral support to seriously ill family members, but not take care of them
• Employees who may have a somewhat serious medical conditions, but whom fail to get enough medical treatment to qualify for CFRA/FMLA leave

Whatever the employer’s excuse was for your termination of employment, we would like to speak to you if you feel your CFRA/FMLA rights were violated. Our experience in CFRA/FMLA cases include multiple won binding arbitrations in which Family Medical Leave/California Family Rights Leave Act Rights were involved as well as jury trials. We have also settled many cases involving the failure to grant and/or loss of employment due to the exercise of Family Medical Leave/California Family Legal Rights Leaves.