CVN screenshot of plaintiff attorney Michael Alder delivering his opening statement
San Bernardino, CA - A California state court jury heard opening statements Monday in an age discrimination lawsuit filed by a former longtime employee of a pool equipment supply company, and the full trial is being webcast gavel-to-gavel by Courtroom View Network.
Plaintiff Manuel Banderas alleges he was forced into retirement in 2020 at the age of 62 after working as a minimum wage supply warehouse employee for 41 years. He maintains he was threatened with the alternative of being fired in a supposedly haphazard off-the-books process supposedly meant to cover the company’s true goal of discarding an older worker while avoiding liability for workplace discrimination laws.
However Pentair, a publicly traded company with roughly 10,000 employees, maintains Banderas voluntarily accepted retirement and that despite a history of workplace safety violations the company passed on numerous opportunities to fire Banderas before 2020 in an effort to to give him multiple chances for performance improvement.
During his opening statement on behalf of Banderas, attorney Michael Alder of Alder Law told jurors that Banderas worked for decades performing manual labor in a Pentair warehouse, and that he received positive employee recognitions over the years.
Alder alleged that shortly after a management change at Pentair, Banderas began racking up various employee misconduct warnings related to the process for clocking in and clocking out, but Alder dismissed those as events where Banderas clocked back in to work too early versus showing up late.
Alder detailed that Banderas was eventually pulled from the line and called into a meeting with a traveling corporate HR representative and told, in Alder’s words, “We’re going to fire you. You’re getting a little old to do this job, you’re doing some things wrong, but you can retire if you want. Your choice.”
Banderas claims he agreed to retire and was then given a blank piece of paper and directed to draft a statement announcing his resignation at the end of the week, a process that Alder told jurors should raise numerous red flags.
“No emails, no texts, no documentation. No witness in the meeting. No forms used,” Alder emphasized to the jury. “There’s nothing. All against protocol for a one employee company, much less a 10,000 employee company.”
Alder described to jurors that since Banderas was 62 at the time he was not yet eligible for full Social Security benefits or for Medicare, that the financial impact of losing his meager income without being eligible for unemployment benefits caused him significant emotional distress.
During his opening statement on behalf of Pentair, attorney Reginald Roberts of Sanders Roberts told jurors that Alder’s opening statement omitted any mention of numerous more serious write-ups that Banderas received in the years leading up to 2020 - many involving the use of a forklift.
“There were safety issues regarding his work performance,” Roberts said.
CVN screenshot of defense attorney Reginald Roberts delivering his opening statement
Roberts repeatedly stressed to jurors that Banderas worked as an at-will employee, and that Pentair could have fired him for any reason, for no reason and with no notice. He explained that Pentair had to comply with new California labor policies that require mandatory rest periods, and he described Banderas as a long-time employee who refused to comply with updated policies.
Eventually Banderas received a final written warning about his accumulated violations, and Roberts argued he voluntarily went to the corporate HR representative’s office to resign instead.
“He feared being terminated, so he quit,” he said. “Now he claims this was about his age.”
The full trial is expected to take roughly two weeks to complete and CVN’s gavel-to-gavel coverage will continue for the duration of the proceedings.
The case is captioned Manuel Bandera v. Pentair Water Pool & Spa Inc., et al., case number CIVSB2118045 in San Bernardino County Superior Court.
E-mail David Siegel at dsiegel@cvn.com