As a San Diego, Orange County and Palm Desert employment attorney, even with all the advice given to employers about being politically correct with their employee relations in Newport Beach and Huntington Beach, even with news stories in Anaheim and Irvine, legal verdicts in Santa Ana and Indio, and comedy routines on the television in Los Angeles, and San Diego, employers on occasion still do the stupidest things to or with their employees in California.

At the same time, there are now employees out there, probably in Anaheim, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Long Beach, Riverside, Chula Vista, and perhaps in Huntington Beach or Laguna Beach, who are thinking about using the law to their advantage to extort money from their employers.

This type of extortion can happen whether your place of business is in Palm Springs or Palm Desert, La Jolla, Del Mar, Carlsbad, El Cajon or anywhere else in San Diego, in Mission Beach, Yorba Linda, Garden Grove, Fullerton, Irvine or anywhere else in Orange County and even in cities such as Fullerton, Moreno Valley, San Bernardino, Fontana, Temecula and not just in major cities like Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Ventura, Oxnard or Santa Barbara.

The scenario goes something like this. The employer is threatened by an employee that unless he pays a certain sum of money, the employee will go to the police and to a lawyer telling them that the employer demanded sex in return for either continued employment, a better job, or some other advancement.Unless the employer pays, he will be faced with certain embarrassment, damage to reputation and business, horrendous legal fees that he is almost certainly not insured against, and perhaps damage to a relationship at home. Extortion, plain and simple.

Add these facts and it becomes even worse. The employee has been a model employee for years. The employer has never had to issue the employee with a warning letter. The employee has consistently received raises and bonuses. If the employer attempts to now construct a different picture of the employee as a conniving extortionist, it will not be believed.

Is there anything an employer can do to protect himself against this scenario? Yes.

Employers can purchase Employment Practices Liability Insurance. It is available through most insurance agents yet few employers are either told about it or purchase the coverage.

What EPLI does, is insure the employer against claims of sexual harassment, sexual, racial, age, and other types of discrimination, wrongful termination and any number of other employment claims such as the "hostile environment" claim that forces an employee to quit. And then sue.

Having such insurance also provides for legal defense of the employer. Legal fees in an employment discrimination case can easily reach $50,000 within months, and well over $100,000 in litigation that lasts years as it often does.

While employment lawsuits often settle either prior to or in the course of litigation, it only takes one lawsuit for an employer to realize how much better it would have been had he purchased Employment Practices Liability Insurance at a premium cost of a few thousand dollars a year.

If you don't have this type of insurance when this type of scenario plays out, or haven't been able to buy it, the damage to your reputation can still be limited with a strong and vigorous defense by an employment attorney. Just because this type of allegation is being made against an employer doesn't mean that the media will automatically run with the story, especially when you have an attorney stating that the allegations are without any basis in fact (if that is indeed the case).

If someone has made a threat to sue you for an employment related claim, don't wait until you've been sued to contact an employment lawyer.If you have an employment law issue in San Diego, Long Beach, in San Diego, Palm Springs or anywhere in Southern California, we have the knowledge and resources to be your Anaheim Employment Lawyers, and Orange County, San Diego and Ontario Employment Attorneys. For this reason, be sure to hire a California law firm with employment lawyers who can represent you from Palm Springs, Laguna, Newport and Huntington Beach, Corona del Mar, Anaheim, Irvine, La Quinta, Palm Desert, Yorba Linda, Carlsbad, San Diego, Costa Mesa, Westminster, Murrieta, to Chula Vista, and Coachella.

If you have an employment law issue, and need to know your rights, call the Law Offices of R. Sebastian Gibson, or visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com  and learn how we can assist you. You can also call us to speak directly to Sebastian Gibson on the phone about your legal matter.