Opinion ID: 1275413
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Aiding and Abetting Claim

Text: The Janken court considered and rejected another textual argument for personal liability under the FEHA. Section 12940, subdivision (g) provides that it is an unlawful employment practice for `any person to aid, abet, incite, compel or coerce the doing of any of the acts forbidden' by the FEHA, or `to attempt to do so.' Plaintiffs contend that the supervisory employee defendants here can be held liable on the theory that, in making the challenged personnel decisions on behalf of [the employer], they `aided and abetted' [the employer]. Preliminarily, we can discern purposes for the `aid and abet' language independent of any involving the liabilities of supervisory employees. This language makes it unlawful, for example, for third parties such as customers or suppliers to induce or coerce prohibited discrimination or harassment. Plaintiffs contend, however, that this `aid and abet' language also places individual supervisory employees at risk of personal liability for personnel management decisions in which they participate. We must now decide whether the Legislature intended to accomplish a result so significant by a method so abstruse. Aiding and abetting occurs when one helps another commit a prohibited act. [Citation.] The concept of aiding and abetting involves two separate persons, one helping the other. Here we deal with individual employees of a corporate employer. A corporation can act only through its individual employees. [Citation.] Our question is whether it can properly be said that a corporate employee is `aiding and abetting his or her corporate employer when the corporate employee acts on behalf of the corporation by making a personnel decision or, more precisely, whether this is the meaning intended by the Legislature. . . . . ... Linguistically, it is questionable whether it can properly be said that an employee who exercises delegated personnel management authority is `aiding and abetting his or her employer in managing personnel, and the stilted and unusual nature of such a usage alone casts doubt on plaintiffs' construction. Had the Legislature intended to place all employees charged with the duty of making personnel decisions in California at risk of personal liability, we believe the Legislature would have done so by language more direct and less susceptible to doubt.... ... For the reasons stated here plus those stated above in connection with the `agent' issue, we conclude that the Legislature did not intend to impose personal liability upon individual supervisory employees by the roundabout method of `aiding and abetting' language. ( Janken, supra, 46 Cal. App.4th at pp. 77-79, 53 Cal.Rptr.2d 741.)