Wrongful Termination Lawsuit Finds Success After 2 Investigates Coverage

In recent news, a KTVU 2 Investigates report helped a woman’s wrongful termination lawsuit meet with success. The KTVU 2 Investigates report ended up being the spark necessary to lead the case to an award of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The woman in the case, Ivania Centeno, was allegedly wrongfully terminated over a family-leave discrepancy.

Centeno, a 13-year employee at South San Francisco’s Bon Appetit café, claimed she was let go in 2017 after she took time off to provide her dying mother-in-law with necessary care. Centeno fought for resolution in the case for over a year without much progress.

After the 2 Investigates coverage aired in February 2019 highlighting the situation and bringing to light the legal loophole in California preventing in-laws from qualifying employees for leave under family-leave laws, the case saw movement. According to California’s paid leave law, care of in-laws is covered, but under the California Family Rights Act, care of in-laws is not covered. The question becomes which law takes precedent and the answer is not quite clear. The problem will require legislative changes.

Centeno claims that Bon Appetit gave her permission to fly to Nicaragua to provide care when her mother-in-law became deathly ill. Her mother-in-law later passed away and Centeno headed back to return to the job at the restaurant. When she arrived, the restaurant fired her. They insisted both that she missed too many days of work and that her mother-in-law did not qualify under the family leave policy.

Company records show management blaming computer software at the company for the decision to terminate Centeno based on the trip to care for her mother-in-law combined with circumstances surrounding her recent and previous absences from work due to a work-related injury. The 2 Investigates team requested to interview the company to get some answers about the lawsuit, but they did not receive a response. In April, the case was finally resolved. Centeno was offered an undisclosed amount of backpay, unemployment benefits, and attorney fees plus court costs.

If you have been wrongfully terminated or denied family-leave time you are eligible for under employment law, please get in touch with one of the experienced employment law attorneys at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik and DeBlouw LLP today.