KARL GERBER, WORKPLACE LAWYER
RADIO SHOW

Since 1993 Los Angeles native, Karl Gerber, has represented more than 5,000 California employees in lawsuits against their employers. In 2010 he was ordained to practice law in Texas (with a law license). The same year the state bars of Massachusetts and Washington D.C. issued him licenses to practice law. On the Federal level, he is licensed before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Central District of California, Southern District of California, Eastern and Northern Districts of California. He is a member of the California Employment Lawyers Associate and Labor and Employment Section of the California State Bar.

Gerber has won 46 out of the 48 of the binding arbitrations and jury trials he first-chaired. Seven of the appeals he did for clients are published cases in the California law books. After ending his fourteen year statewide partnership, Danz & Gerber, he formed Employment Lawyers Group. Between 2008-2012 he had a nationwide practice with up to 80 lawyers doing his cases. In California, Gerber’s new firm began trying a lot of cases and filing class action lawsuits.

ATTORNEY FOR WORKPLACE, BACKGROUND

For several reasons, the practice of law appealed to Gerber. From an early age he was instilled with the importance of social justice. His father was a radical political science professor during the 1960s and 1970s. Gerber’s mother was a Freedom Rider, and later a social worker. Gerber vowed he would be a discrimination lawyer rewriting the wrongs of invidious discrimination if higher powers allowed him to make it through his first-year at a law school that flunked out 1/3 of the class and the other third left due to the brutality of the experience.

Around the time he graduated from law school at age 23, Gerber decided most adults spend the best part of their productive hours at work. If work was a bad place, the life was robbed from the worker. Accordingly, employees needed rights and legal representation. The day Gerber took the oath to be a California attorney, he had clients waiting. From 1994-1997 Gerber’s his telephone book advertisements were generally the only ones for lawyers representing employees. In approximately 2000 his law firm filed 2/3 of the employment lawsuits in the main courthouse in Los Angeles.

Employment law has exploded over the years. Today there are probably more Los Angeles employment lawyers than any others. Some of the early concepts Gerber tested in the mid-1990s, such as joint employment and transgender discrimination, became codified legal principles by statute. Gerber also found himself testing new statutes such as the Private Attorney General Act (PAGA) of 2004. His firm was one of the first to have a settlement for PAGA penalties, or actually engage in final adjudication of a PAGA claim. For at least the first fifteen years of Gerber’s career he was generally the first to encounter an issue in employment law. By his twentieth year in practice he continued to confront issues other practitioners had not yet confronted. Still, today Gerber’s legal issues are at the forefront of California employment law. Every day in court, portions of Gerber’s legal briefs are re-circulated by generations of employment lawyers.

Gerber’s experience fiction writing taught him how to tell a story. Somewhere between representing 1,000 clients from different backgrounds, suing so many different industries, being raised by a sociologist mother who talked too much, and becoming a journeyman level in several building trades, Gerber developed a way to conduct a trial like no other labor lawyer. By 2008, a phenomena began in which the defense stopped putting on witnesses after Gerber crossed up to three witnesses defense put on. By 2014, defense stopped after Gerber crossed one of their witnesses. Liars, coached witnesses, and witnesses with agendas have no place in front of Gerber.

Gerber has given several continuing legal education seminars to lawyers. He has also taught lawyers and non-lawyers about prevailing wages and sexual harassment.

Gerber is an expert on the history of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. He has a 30 year collect of artifacts, books, maps, photographs, postcards, printings, and telephone books. Besides writing the Legend of the Lizard People, which incorporated several famous Los Angeles myths, he maintains two websites about the lore, myth, and history of Los Angeles: