Los Angeles Expense Reimbursement Lawyer

Failure to Reimburse Expenses

California employment law dictates that employers must reimburse their employees for any necessary expenses the employee incurs during the course of employment or at the direction of their employer. When an employer does not reimburse reasonable fees, employees can take legal action to recover the expenses, interest, and their attorney fees. If your employer has not reimbursed your expenses, we can help you recover the damages you deserve.

 Proving Failure to Reimburse Expenses

Employers are required to reimburse their employees for expenses at certain times, but employees must also prove their case when they take legal action. To be successful with their claim, employees must prove:

• The employee incurred expenses,
• The expenses were incurred as a result of the employee’s employment, or were incurred at the direction of the employer, and
• The expenses were necessary

Employees can only expect to be reimbursed for reasonable expenses, and many factors are considered when determining if an expense was reasonable. These include:

• Type of employment
• Type of industry or business
• History of expenses and reimbursements
• Directions given by employer
• Agreement between the employee and employer
• Reimbursement of other employees
• Company policy on expenditures
• Business travel
• Co-mingling of employment and non-employment expenses

Although the law is quite clear that employers are required to reimburse employees for reasonable expenses, employers still use many tactics to try and avoid doing so.

How Employers Deny Reimbursement

Employers often want to deny or reduce reimbursement for a number of reasons. If the employer did not agree with the expense, they may avoid reimbursing the employee as a retaliatory measure, punishing the employee and trying to deter them from incurring such expenses in the future. Or, an employer may simply want to retain their profits and do so by denying or reducing the total amount of reimbursement. Some of the tactics employers use to avoid reimbursing employees are as follows:

• Reimbursing employees in installments
• Requiring employees to take additional steps or provide more records for reimbursement
• Reducing the reimbursement to less than the full amount
• Use limits on expenses without exceptions
• Blaming employees for high expenditures
• Changing the requirements for reimbursement after the fact
• Sloppy record keeping

In addition to denying or delaying reimbursement of expenses, employers will sometimes also threaten to take negative action against the employee if the worker demands repayment. This is also against the law. Employers sometimes threaten a worker’s position over requests for reimbursement, or they may retaliate in other ways such as by demoting, discriminating against, or harassing the employee.

Call Our Los Angeles Failure to Reimburse Expenses Attorney Today

If your employer has not reimbursed you for employment-related expenses, our team at Litigation, P.C. can advise on your case. Call us today at 424-284-2401 or fill out our online form to schedule a consultation with our knowledgeable employment lawyer and to learn more about how we can help.