Two Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani California Employment teams recently secured back-to-back defense victories in Alameda County jury trials.
GRSM San Francisco Managing Partner Marie Trimble Holvick and Partner Pamela Ng obtained a complete defense verdict following a three-week jury trial. The plaintiff was a current employee of the defendant who alleged claims of race, national origin, and disability discrimination. The plaintiff argued that, despite years of excellent performance reviews, her employer did not promote her to a supervisory position and selected her for layoff due to her race or medical leave.
Holvick and Ng argued that while the plaintiff performed her current role well, she performed poorly in an interim supervisor role and was not ultimately laid off. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the firm’s client after only a half day of deliberations.
Building on that momentum, just one day later, GRSM Northern California Employment Partner Mike Laurenson, Sacramento Managing Partner Jennifer Holly, and Senior Counsel Matthew Vesterdahl secured a complete defense verdict following a three-week jury trial in the same courthouse. The plaintiff was an executive at Samba TV, Inc., a technology company, who was included in a group of employees that transitioned employment to a new company as part of a business acquisition. The plaintiff brought gender and pregnancy discrimination claims, alleging that her former employer added her to the group of transitioning employees because she was pregnant, and claimed that company executives were biased against pregnant women and working mothers.
Laurenson, Holly, and Vesterdahl argued that the plaintiff was included in the group of transitioning employees because the acquiring company expressly asked for her inclusion. The trial team presented several former and current Samba employees, including several working mothers and female executives, who testified about their success and support within Samba to contradict the alleged bias. The jury returned a verdict in favor of Samba after only two and a half hours of deliberations.
Together, these consecutive trial wins reflect the depth of GRSM’s California employment bench and the firm’s ability to secure decisive outcomes in complex workplace litigation.