$2.73 Million Verdict Against Lawrence Livermore Lab for Breaching Seniority Policy in 2008 Layoffs

In May 2008, Lawrence Livermore National Security LLC (LLNS) carried out a major workforce reduction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, dismissing more than 400 permanent career employees, including roughly 160 scientists. LLNS had taken over management of the lab from the University of California in October 2007, about seven months earlier, as part of a privatization led by a consortium that included Bechtel Corporation. Many of the workers who were let go had spent decades at the facility, averaging 54 years old with about 20 years of seniority.

The employees filed suit in Alameda County Superior Court alleging that LLNS had breached their employment contracts. Their core argument: the lab's own written layoff policy required reductions to proceed in inverse order of seniority, meaning the longest-tenured workers should have been the last to go. Instead, those workers were disproportionately the ones let go.

Because more than 130 plaintiffs had parallel claims, Judge Robert Freedman selected five workers to proceed first as test plaintiffs: Elaine Andrews, Marian Barraza, Mario Jimenez, Greg Olsen, and James Torrice. Their breach-of-contract phase ran from March 18 to May 10, 2013. Gwilliam Ivary Chiosso Cavalli and Brewer attorneys J. Gary Gwilliam, Randall Strauss, and Robert Schwartz handled the case for the plaintiffs.

On May 10, 2013, the jury found for all five plaintiffs. Total damages came to $2,728,327. Individual awards ranged from $443,299 (Barraza) to $853,010 (Jimenez), with Olsen receiving $704,234 and Torrice $485,783. A second trial on age-discrimination claims resulted in a defense verdict for the lab.

Both verdicts were on appeal when, at the encouragement of Judge Freedman, the parties entered mediation. On September 30, 2015, LLNS agreed to pay $37.25 million to resolve the contract claims of 129 of the 130 plaintiffs. One plaintiff did not join the settlement. The lab maintained throughout that it had done nothing wrong in connection with the 2008 reduction.