You may have heard of incidents where employees have sued their employers for violations of the FMLA and received large sums in judgment amounts. If you’re in a similar scenario with your employer violating the FMLA, you may be considering taking legal action. However, this comes along with many questions, such as do you have enough evidence to win and will the damages you get rewarded be worth the effort?
What Is The FMLA?
The FMLA is an abbreviation for the Family and Medical Leave Act. This guarantees employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave each year with no threat of job loss. The reasons you can take this leave are:
- You’re unable to work due to a serious medical condition.
- You must care for an immediate family member that has a severe illness.
- You or your spouse just gave birth to a child or you’ve just adopted a child.
- In all of these scenarios, your employer must still maintain your usual health benefits.
What Compensation Can My Lawsuit Award?
A family medical leave lawyer can help you to fight your FMLA violation case against your employer. There are a few different types of damages that you can recover from your lawsuit. These include back pay, front pay, and attorney’s fees. Let’s take a closer look at each one of these specific types of awards below.
Back Pay
If you’ve been denied family medical leave and took the leave anyway, you may be entitled to back pay. This will be the payment of your regular wages for the period from when you were unable to work until a lawsuit is settled. For example, if you were denied medical leave two years ago and the case was just decided by the courts, then you will be entitled to two full years of back pay.
Front Pay
Once your Los Angeles employment lawyer gets your case decided, it may be determined that you’re unable to work for the employer in the future. This could simply be the animosity between the victim and the employer. For this reason, the court can award front pay which will be your regular pay for a set period of time which the court determines in which you won’t be able to find an equivalent job.
Attorney’s Fees
Any attorney for family medical leave is going to charge a fee for representing you. Luckily, if you win your case, you can get awarded the money to pay the bill to your attorney. This can be especially helpful in cases that are drawn-out and require a substantial fee.
