Los Angeles Whistleblower Laws by:Mark Dacanay
Los Angeles Whistleblower laws protect employees from the retaliation or reprisal of their employers
. An employee should have no fear of revenge from reporting misconduct or illegal acts occurring in the company.
To define, a whistleblower refers to a person who alleges misconduct. Misconduct may be defined in different ways such as the following: violation of the law, violations of rules and regulations and acts that are a direct threat to the public. An example of an act that is a direct threat to the public is fraud, safety violations and corruption.
There are two types of whistleblowers. There are the internal and external whistleblowers.
Internal - Most whistleblowers are under this category. These are people who report the incident through the internal grievance system of the company. The complaint may be towards a co-employee or someone in management. The company tries to resolve the conflict inside the company.
External - These whistleblowers report the incident to whomever they think will be able to handle the situation the best outside the company. Examples of these are media, law enforcement, watchdog organizations and/or a lawyer.
In Los Angeles, there are different laws that cover whistleblowers. Two of them are the California False Claims Act and the Whistleblower protection law is two of them.
False Claims Act
The California False Claims Act or the "Employer interference with employee disclosures" under Section 12653, states that employers are not allowed to create rules that will prevent its employees from disclosing information to the government to help in a false claims action.
In addition, the employer is prohibited from retaliating against the employee by discharging, demoting, suspending, threatening, harassing, denying promotion, or any other discriminatory actions to the employee because of the act of disclosing the information.
Lastly, the whistleblower may also get some share of the proceeds of the settlement if the government was successful in collecting the damages as a result of a successful fraud case.
Whistleblower Protection Law
The Whistleblower protection law was not passed by congress until 1986. This was added as an anti-retaliation protection to the False Claims Act.
The employee may be of big help in investigations thus they are protected by law from retaliation.
However, there are some restrictions under this law.
In the event where it is proven that the employer did not actually break a law. The whistleblower is still protected from retaliation if he/she truly believed that the employer did committed and illegal act.
The law does not cover retaliation because of personal loathe. Situations like office politics cannot be used as a basis for filing a complaint against an employer and use the whistleblower law for protection.
For an employee to be protected by the whistleblower law, he/she should have suspected violations of the federal law. The federal law should have provisions that that the law protects whistleblowers.
All individuals involved are pursued administratively. Individuals concerned could file a complaint or charge to retaliate with or without a lawyer.
A whistleblower should not delay any investigation for a possible remedy. The complaint of retaliation should be reported within 30 days after it happened or the complaint cannot be pursued.
Each state may have different anti-retaliation laws. To know more about Los Angeles whistleblower laws, consult an attorney who is familiar with employment laws in the State of California.
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