Roberta Hayashi, Berliner Cohen partner, was quoted in the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal’s September 9, 2011 article “Chances Dim for Lawsuit Filed by Former Solyndra Employees.”
The article reported that some former employees have filed suit against the company because of Solyndra’s abrupt closure. The suit alleges that the plaintiffs and hundreds of co-workers were not given the legally required advanced notice of the closure. However, the company could seek an exemption under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act and its California counterpart, the Cal-WARN Act that could have required Solyndra to give 60 days notice to workers being terminated.
For Solyndra, exemptions would have to be granted by the California labor commissioner’s office and potentially a federal judge, according to Roberta Hayashi, chair of the employment law practice group at San Jose-based Berliner Cohen. “When applying, a company must prove that the new capital would have let them “avoid or postpone” terminating its workers,” said Berliner’s Hayashi…“It’s not enough to say, ‘We’re actively seeking capital,’” Hayashi said.