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City of Moorpark v. Superior Court of Ventura County8/17/1998
Cal.App.3d 285, and following much of its reasoning, the court held that section 132a provided the exclusive remedy for an employee claiming discrimination based on a work-related disability. (Pickrel, supra, 205 Cal.App.3d at pp. 1063-1064; see also Usher v. American Airlines, Inc., supra, 20 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1526-1527 [following Pickrel]; Denney v. Universal City Studios, Inc., supra, 10 Cal.App.4th at p. 1235 [same]; Fortner v. Safeway Stores, Inc., supra, 229 Cal.App.3d at pp. 548, 551 [same].) The court stated that the result in Portillo was "consonant with the trend of recent decisions `. . . to narrow the range of exceptions to exclusivity, [thus] benefit both employers and employees within the system, by . . . preserving the low cost, efficiency and certainty of recovery which characterizes workers' compensation.' (Continental Casualty Co. v. Superior Court (1987) 190 Cal.App.3d 156, 162 [235 Cal.Rptr. 260].)" (Pickrel, supra, 205 Cal.App.3d at p. 1064.)
After the Pickrel decision, we addressed the scope of workers' compensation exclusivity in Shoemaker v. Myers (1990) 52 Cal.3d 1 (Shoemaker) and Gantt, supra, 1 Cal.4th 1083. Both cases considered what remedies are available to an employee who suffers a physical or psychological injury as a result of wrongful termination of employment, but neither case involved termination based on a work-related injury or disability. Therefore, neither case implicated section 132a directly.
In Shoemaker, the employee alleged wrongful termination and related causes of action, including termination in violation of a "whistleblower" protection statute (Gov. Code, former ยง 19683). We concluded "that disabling injuries, whether physical or mental, arising from termination of employment are generally within the coverage of workers' compensation and subject to the exclusive remedy provisions, unless the discharge comes within an express or implied statutory exception or the discharge results from risks reasonably deemed not to be within the compensation bargain." (Shoemaker, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 7.) By referring to the "compensation bargain," we recognized the same legislative compromise that the Portillo court cited (see Portillo, supra, 131 Cal.App.3d at pp. 287-288): " he employer assumes liability for industrial personal injury or death without regard to fault in exchange for limitations on the amount of that liability. The employee is afforded relatively swift and certain payment of benefits to cure or relieve the effects of industrial injury without having to prove fault, but, in exchange, gives up the wider range of damages potentially available in tort. [Citations.]" (Shoemaker, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 16.)
Though we stated that most injuries arising from termination of employment fall within the compensation bargain, we noted that "the exclusive remedy provisions are not applicable [to injuries arising from] `conduct where the employer or insurer stepped out of their proper roles' [citations] . . . ." (Shoemaker, supra, 52 Cal.3d at p. 16.) Therefore, we concluded that an injury resulting from a wrongful termination in violation of a whistleblower statute "lies well outside the compensation bargain," and the exclusive remedy provisions do not apply. (Id. at p. 23.) We reasoned that, by enacting the whistleblower statute, " he Legislature clearly intended to afford an additional remedy to those already granted under other provisions of the law; otherwise [the whistleblower statute] would be rendered meaningless. [Citation.]" (Id. at p. 22.)
The decision in Shoemaker turned in part on the fact that the whistleblower statute constituted a specific declaration of the Legislature's intent to create a new, additional remedy. The
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