Back Pay

A former Orange County assistant sheriff who was fired and sent to jail in a perjury conviction is in line to get a big pay day -- about three years of back pay with benefits for wrongful termination. The tentative ruling in the wrong termination case was issued Friday by Orange County Superior Court Judge Andrew Banks.

In the most sweeping shake-up ever to county pension systems in California, Orange, Los Angeles and 18 other counties are moving to hand out tens of millions of dollars in higher retirement benefits to comply with a little-noticed state Supreme Court ruling.

A federal court ordered the government to make back payments to 200,000 federal workers, most of them women, in the biggest pay-equity case in Canadian history. The decision may mean the government will have to fork out billions of dollars in what union officials in the Public Service Alliance of Canada hailed as a victory for women but right-wing politicians viewed as a misguided blow to taxpayers. The union says it is claiming more than $1.

A Temecula man was awarded $73,680 in damages Thursday after arguing he was haunted by a false report of shoplifting that prevented him from finding a job for four years. The attorney for plaintiff Bronti Kelly, 33, had sought back pay and $200,000 in punitive damages from the May Co.--parent company of Robinsons-May department store--and its security company, Stores Protective Assn.

His life had been in limbo for 5 1/2 years, he had been shamed in the eyes of the law, but for William Hogan, redemption was just one phone call--and thousands of miles--away that night. He stopped at a pay phone in the hills of Spain, at the foot of the Alhambra, the ancient Moorish palace he had toured that day.

R.R. Donnelley & Sons has agreed to spend $425,000 to make salaries for women and minorities equal to those of other employees. Under an agreement with the Labor Department, the commercial printer will pay $252,832 in back pay and salary adjustments to 29 women and minorities. The rest of the money will go toward upgrading procedures and creating incentives for managers to improve affirmative action, the Labor Department said.

Albertson's Inc. lost its fight to force unionized workers to take their complaints to arbitration instead of court after they sued the company for allegedly making them work unpaid overtime. A U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Seattle unanimously rejected an appeal by the fifth-largest U.S. grocery store chain, which had argued that a lower-court ruling last year conflicted with union contracts compelling arbitration.

Dona and James Perry are a foster child's dream. Their yard in the Ventura County community of Camarillo is filled with jungle gyms, a trampoline, chickens, pigs and fruit trees. Their house is a happy jumble of toys, bicycles and clothing. Children dash through the rooms and cartwheel across the lawn. Four-year-old Rikki, who came to the Perrys three years ago with a fractured skull and signs of autism, dangles upside down on a bar, giggling and chewing gum.

To the surprise of just about everyone involved, a Superior Court judge has awarded more than $47,000 in back wages to an illegal immigrant from Indonesia who said she was exploited by a Carson couple who employed her as a live-in housekeeper for nearly three years.

A congressional subcommittee on Wednesday approved $20 million in restitution payments to a group of Vietnamese commandos who had fought for the U.S. but were left behind in prison at the end of the Vietnam War. The proposal, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), is intended to undo a bureaucratic snag that stalled a similar bill approved overwhelmingly by Congress last year. The commandos took part in CIA-sponsored missions into North Vietnam and Laos in the 1960s.