A Los Angeles Superior Court jury has awarded just under $1.1 million to attorney Warren Snider in his wrongful termination suit against the firm of Laquer Urban Clifford & Hodge LLP.
Snider, who worked an associate in Laquer Urban’s Pasadena office from 1991 to 2003, sued the firm in February 2005 alleging it fired him because treatments he underwent for his chronic liver disease required him to scale back his billable hours—to an average of 135-140 hours per month instead of the 150-hour average he would have needed to meet the firm’s annual billable requirement of 1,800 hours. . . .
[F]our months [into his course of treatment], at which point Snider had seven months left of treatment, partner Christopher Laquer fired Snider for insubordination, saying that he violated the firm’s vacation policy when he took a trip to Northern California to attend his father-in-law’s memorial service.
The termination was clearly pretextual, [Snider's attorney Wilmer] Harris told the MetNews.
Details here from the Metropolitan News-Enterprise.