David deRubertis

Trial Lawyer at The deRubertis Law Firm, APC and Dad at home. Tweets about law, life, family and sometimes hip hop.

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Today, the most diligent jury I’ve ever seen held Southern California Edison/Edison International liable for retaliation. The jury awarded Alfredo Martinez over $422.5 million—the largest individual employment verdict in US history. It awarded Justin Page $42.2 million.

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

On Oct 20th, after a 2 1/2 week trial, an LA jury found that our client, Dr. Anissa Rogers, was subjected to a gender-based hostile work environment which Cal State Univ San Bernardino @csusbnews failed to prevent and that she was retaliated against for reporting gender-based mistreatment by then Dean of CSUSB’s Palm Desert Campus, Dr. Jake Zhu. The case was not about wage loss but equal treatment at work, loss of enjoyment of life and loss of the dignity that work brings. The jury felt the harm and compassionately returned a $6 million verdict for these non-economic, human harms. I was honored to represent Dr. Rogers along with my amazing co-counsel Courtney Abrams and Andrew Friedman who lived this case from day one and worked tirelessly to deliver justice to Dr. Rogers. I am grateful that they asked me to join the team for this trial. Huge thanks to @TrialByHarry for his always indispensable work in our trials (this time navigating through a very challenging panel) to Joe Repking from EP who stepped up his trial tech game on this one, and to Leslie Gomez-Garcia and everyone at DLF for all they do to continue to allow me to try these cases. This was the first of two gender discrimination and harassment cases that our co-counsel team has against Cal State San Bernardino and we look forward to continue to shine a light on the systemic problems of gender-based mistreatment that lived for far too long throughout the Cal State system. But for now, we are grateful that justice was delivered to Dr. Rogers.

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Thank you ⁦@TheNLJ⁩ for recognizing my firm as the 2025 Elite Trial Lawyers for Employment Rights. With almost $600 million in employment-related jury verdicts in the last 3 years, we appreciate all of our co-counsel & clients who entrusted us with these trials.

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Jury orders Dignity Health to pay former CNO $27.5M over retaliation - Becker's Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis https://t.co/Ebjmo07bcD

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

On June 26th, 2025, after a nearly 5 week trial, a diligent, committed and compassionate Los Angeles jury returned a $27.5 million whistleblower retaliation and failure to accommodate/failure to engage verdict against Dignity Health in favor of our wonderful client, Nancy Valla, the former Chief Nursing Officer at Dignity Health’s St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach. I had the privilege of representing Nancy at trial along with my co-counsel Brennan Hershey & Johnny Rundell. Nancy, as a nurse, took to heart that her #1 responsibility was to ensure patient safety and quality of care. But the evidence in this trial showed that Nancy’s push for safety and quality of care clashed with the hospital’s CEO’s and COO’s focus on maximizing short-term profits over the safety of patients. Nancy didn’t back down and she wouldn’t be silenced, but she then found herself in the cross-hairs of retaliation led by the hospital’s CEO Carolyn Caldwell. The retaliatory conduct pushed Nancy into a medical leave which the hospital could easily have accommodated. But instead they used it as an excuse to rid themselves of the whistleblower. After about 2 hours of deliberations, the jury returned a unanimous 12/0 verdict on all claims (whistleblower retaliation, failure to accommodate, failure to engage in good-faith IAP) with a total verdict of $27.5 million ($5 million economics and $22.5 million in non-economics/human harms). After their verdict, many of the jurors embraced Nancy with heartfelt hugs sharing a beautiful moment of mutual tears. Thank you to Nancy for trusting me to tell her authentic story, to Brennan Hershey for asking me to do this trial with his firm, to my Director of Trials Leslie Gomez for being my indispensable trial partner, to @TrialByHarry and @TrialByClaire who are the best jury consultants in the business and who both worked together to pick this jury, and to the #1 trial tech Joe Repking from EP. Hopefully, health care corporations learn their lesson from verdicts like this.

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Former St. Mary’s Nursing Officer Wins $27.5 Million in Retaliation Suit https://t.co/Cpwwr8K9iT

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Ex-St. Mary nursing officer wins $27.5 million in lawsuit alleging retaliation after she raised safety concerns • Long Beach Business Journal https://t.co/CU3ZJqqNaj

[Consumer Attorneys of Los Angeles @CAALA_org]

Heading to the 2nd Annual CAALA Picnic? Our sister charity, the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers Charities (LATLC), will be collecting new, unwrapped toys at the event to support children in need throughout our community. If you’ve already registered, we encourage you to bring a toy and

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

This is such a critical issue. Thank you for your work on this. All plaintiff lawyers must resist this insanity. In no universe does an expert get to hide the evidence they rely on from the cross examiner. But this is what the defense industry psychs are trying to do. And when we don’t get access to the underlying raw data and all scoring materials, the defense psych is simply allowed to misrepresent facts to the jury. Two trials ago, I had a defense psych absolutely lying about validity scale cut offs. If we didn’t have the raw data, we would not have been able to expose the lie.

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

@planetfunbob @planetfunbob really looking forward to reading this one.

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

@cagoldberglaw @naomi_leeds @stoptheVOID @ANFHelp @cagoldberglaw continues to do some of the most important, and best, work out there. As a parent and trial lawyer, so glad she is on these cases.

[Law360 @Law360]

A California jury has awarded $34.7 million to a former Walmart truck driver, finding that the retailer defamed him when it falsely accused him of fraud and fired him after he was injured on the job and filed a worker's compensation claim. https://t.co/1ibYyvC7WK

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Wednesday this week, after a 4 week trial, our San Bernardino jury returned a $34.7 million employment defamation verdict against Walmart. Mohamed Eldessouky and I represented Jesse Fonseca, a 14 year Walmart truck driver. Jesse lived and breathed Walmart and was as devoted an employee as there can be. But after his semi-truck was rear ended by another semi, he needed to take a worker’s compensation leave to get treatment. Jesse, an honest man who acts with integrity, told Walmart‘s work comp folks that he was taking two pre-planned family vacations…one was RV camping. Instead of acting with integrity and telling Jesse Walmart thought he should not take the trips, Walmart’s work comp adjuster from Sedgwick had surveillance done on Jesse. The surveillance simply saw Jesse bending for a matter of minutes and driving his RV camper. This triggered an internal Walmart fraud investigation. The internal fraud investigator found Jesse to be honest and credible; they found no fraud. Despite this, consistent with Walmart’s policy for this situation, the fraud investigator’s report was turned over to Walmart‘s ethics department. The ethics department then falsely concluded that Jesse had engaged in acts of “intentional dishonesty” which was supposedly an “integrity” violation under Walmart’s ethics policy. Jesse was then terminated based on this false accusation of an “integrity” violation. We showed at trial that Jesse did not violate any policy — let alone, an “integrity” policy. Instead, Jesse’s termination based on this malicious defamation resulted from a policy to defame created by Walmart which took innocent behavior or simple misunderstanding and spun it into a false accusation of “intentional dishonesty” so that Walmart could terminate injured truckers like Jesse. This diligent jury saw the truth, quickly agreed that this was malicious defamation and awarded fair and reasonable compensation…$1.2 million lost wages and benefits and $8.5 million in non-economic harm. It also agreed Walmart needed to be punished to teach it a lesson…returning a $25 million punitive damages verdict. It was an honor to represent Jesse, a true person of integrity, and to speak with the jurors after their verdict. The jurors agreed that Walmart lacked integrity…not Jesse. Thank you to Mohamed Eldessouky for asking me to try this case with him, Harry Plotkin for his always amazing work as the best jury consultant in the biz, Leslie Gomez for being my indispensable trial partner and trial tech extraordinary (aka: cut man) Joseph Repking. #walmart #defamation #injuredworkers #truckers #walmarttrucker #walmarttruckdriver #walmartworkers #juryverdict

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

https://t.co/n6Zu3WSJJM

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Happy to report our San Diego jury returned an $11.2 million failure to accommodate & age discrimination verdict today for our deserving client, Alice Roque who worked for ⁦@OctapharmaUSA⁩ for 19 years. #reasonableaccommodation, #agediscrimination https://t.co/REvcj2NLcG

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Thanks ⁦@LADailyJournal⁩ for recognizing our work in Gatchalian v. Kaiser with a 2024 CLAY Award. It was an honor to represent Maria in this important case. #profitsoverpatients, #nursesprotectpatients, #businessofmedicine, #retaliation, #jurytrial https://t.co/b6dlVimWsh

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Happy to report that our 2 employment trials last year ended up as the #1 & #3 largest employment verdicts in California in 2023. Thank you co-counsel for trusting us, ⁦⁦@TrialByHarry⁩ and my team at DLF, including of course Leslie Gomez-Garcia.

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Better late than never, belated thank you to ⁦⁦@LADailyJournal⁩ 4 recognizing 2 of our verdicts among the 2023 top verdicts list. #jurytrial #juryverdict

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Plaintiff lawyers…join us tomorrow (Tuesday, July 2nd) for this case analysis webinar breaking down our $20 million failure to accommodate verdict against ⁦@Marriott⁩ https://t.co/6zuoB9cg4F

[David deRubertis @derublaw]

Thank you ⁦@Law360⁩ for recognizing our firm as an Employment Law Group of the Year for two years in a row.