The Law Office of Arkady Itkin

Arkady Itkin specializes in a wide range of labor and employment related issues, claims and wrongful termination cases on both, employee and employer side, business formation and litigation as well as serious personal injury case and medical malpractice. He is licensed to practice law in the State of California and Northern and Eastern U.S. District Courts. Mr. Itkin regularly takes injury and employment cases to trial and arbitration.

Website: http://www.arkadylaw.com/
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California employers may need to evaluate new kinds of potential disabilities and requests for accomodations as a result of Covid-19. One possible scenario is an employee’s claim that  Covid-19 infection itself is a protected disability as opposed to a temporary illness such as influenza. Employees may also claim that fear of contracting the virus is a disability that must be accommodated. If the employee’s fear is based on an unerlying, qualifying disability that puts an employee at increased risk of severe illness from Covid-19, the employer may need to consider whether reasonable accomomdation is available to address this hightened risk.…
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Employees and employers should know that in many cases implementing and promoting “anti racist” training in the office that demonizes any race, including white race is every bit as discriminatory and unlawful as any other type of illegal discrimination under California law. Employers should be careful not to push the “white privilege” idea on their workers. There is nothing potentially wrong about making seminars or information in written form available to emploeyees who wish to enrich their understanding of race related issues at workplace, as long as this informaiton doesn’t single out and doesn’t target any specific race more…
To prevail on a claim for intentional interference with prospective economic advantage in California, a plaintiff must plead and prove (1) an economic relationship between the plaintiff and some third party, with the probability of future economic benefit to the plaintiff; (2) the defendant’s knowledge of the relationship; (3) the defendant’s intentional acts designed to disrupt the relationship; (4) actual disruption of the relationship; and (5) economic harm to the plaintiff  caused by the defendant’s acts. Youst v. Longo (1987) 43 Cal.3d 64, 71, fn. 6. Does company “A” have a claim for intentional interference with economic advantage under California…
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The California on-call pay laws are largely based on balancing fairness between employees and employers. Generally, hours for which an employee has been hired to do nothing while merely waiting for something to happen are hours subject to the control of the employers, and constitute hours worked. (Armour & Co. v Wantock (1944); Skidmore v Swift (1944)). In the case of “standby” or “on-call” time, if the restrictions placed on the time of employee are such that the employee is unable to effectively engage in personal activities, the time is subject to the control of the employer and constitutes hours worked. (Madera…
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Both California employees and employers must know that an unprotected medical leave without a promise of reinstatement is not an accommodate under California disability laws. An accommodation by definition is a change or adjustment which allows disabled individuals to perform their job. A leave of absence without a corresponding right to return to work is not an accommodation but rather a delayed termination. Burnett v US Air, Inc., 228 F.3d 1105, 1114-5 (9th Cir. 2000). After all, it has been expressly held that requesting an accommodation to a qualifying disability as a protected activity. Head v Glacier Northwest, Inc. (9th…
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There are two important things any employee who moves for a new job and receives a relocation package as part of the job offer, should keep in mind: (1) Review the repayment obligation in your relocation package to make sure that it’s fairly drafted. Most relocation packages and sign-on bonuses include a repayment provision, also known as a “clawback” provision. An experienced employment attorney can go over it with you and discuss typical issues that arise with relocation packages, such as wanting or having to leave that job for one reason or another much sooner than expected, as well as…
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Under California Labor Code section 515.5, certain software industry employees are exempt from overtime pay requirements, if they perform specific, exempt duties and receive a rate of pay not less than the statutorily-specified rate. Effective January 1, 2020, the computer software employee’s minimum hourly rate of pay, in order to be subject to this exemption, increases from $45.41 / hour to $46.55 / hour, the minimum monthly salary exemption will increase from $7,883.62 to $8,080.71, and the minimum annual salary exemption will increase from $94,603.25 to $96,968.33. In order to be correctly classified as exempt from overtime under the California…
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In most cases, it’s not a good idea for an employer to refuse to issue an employee his final paycheck until he repays his relocation bonus. Likewise, it’s a bad idea to unilaterally deduct the relocation bonus amount from that employee’s final paycheck.  Here is why: First, an employee’s failure to repay his relocation bonus or his failure to honor some other part of your employment agreement is legally not a defense to the legal requirement of paying all wages. A number of laws mandate upon employers to promptly pay all wages due to employees and prohibit taking improper deductions…