April 22, 2015, San Jose, CA – Kotchen & Low LLP, together with DVG Law Partner LLC and V.K. Vandaveer LLC, filed a class action lawsuit against Google, Inc. alleging age discrimination in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and California lawon behalf of Plaintiff Robert Heath. According to the Complaint, Google had a median age of 29 in 2013, which is substantially younger than the 2013 median age of domestic workers (42.4 years) or workers in computer-related fields – e.g., 41.1 years in all “computer and mathematical occupations” and 42.8 years for “computer programmers.”
Mr. Heath applied to Google in 2011 when he was 60 years old and, according to a Google recruiter, had experience and training that would make him “a great candidate to come work at Google and add value.” But, following a perfunctory interview, Mr. Heath was not offered a position.
Mr. Heath’s suit is at least the second age discrimination suit filed against Google. In a prior suit – Reid v. Google, Inc. – the California Supreme Court, in holding that a trial was warranted in the case, found that a former Google executive named Brian Reid had presented admissible statistical evidence supporting preferential performance reviews and bonuses for workers under 40 and admissible evidence of statements by executives reflecting animus towards workers over 40 – e.g., referring to Mr. Reid and as an “old fuddy duddy” and that his opinions were “obsolete” and “too old to matter.”
According to Daniel Low, counsel for Mr. Heath, “The disproportionately low number of older workers and the history of discriminatory remarks at Google provide significant evidence of age discrimination, and we’re hopeful that this lawsuit will help end discriminatory practices at Google and deter discrimination in the industry.”
The complaint can be found here.