Legal Boundaries

July was a landmark month for migrant and low-wage workers in California with three significant court victories that could help improve their working and living conditions:

* An appellate panel in San Diego ruled that farmers can be held financially liable for allowing their workers to live in shanties near the growing fields.

* A state appeals court in Los Angeles declared for the first time that undocumented workers can sue their employers for sexual harassment and other work discrimination under the state’s employment laws.

* And a Los Angeles jury awarded $2.4 million to Virginia Garcia, a former catering truck cook who was scalded with boiling water when her vehicle capsized.

The cases were unrelated, but legal authorities said the two appellate court rulings could help to improve working and living conditions for some workers.

“These decisions send a clear message to employers that you cannot abuse workers because of their immigration status,” said Victor Narro, a workers’ rights coordinator with the Coalition for Human Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

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Claudia Smith, an attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation in Oceanside, said the rulings are a welcome attempt to hold some employers responsible for abuses.

Said Smith, “If controlling illegal immigration is the goal, going after employers is the fairest and most effective means of doing that.”

Carla Barboza, a Los Angeles attorney who specializes in employment law, agreed.

“In an immigrant-bashing climate, the courts have come up with the right decisions based not on politics but on law,” she said.

Barboza was the attorney for Isella Murillo, a 27-year-old former assembler with Rite Stuff Foods Inc., a food-processing concern in Commerce.

Murillo’s sexual harassment suit against the company and her supervisor, who allegedly groped her, was dismissed after she acknowledged presenting false immigration documents to secure her job.

But in a July 23 decision, the 2nd District Court of Appeal said that evidence couldn’t be used against her. State employment laws applied to undocumented workers “notwithstanding the illegality of employing them,” the court wrote.

Rose Fua, an attorney with Equal Rights Advocates in San Francisco, a nonprofit group specializing in discrimination law, said the decision essentially prevents the creation of “a subclass of workers who could be exploited by employers with impunity.”

On July 7, an appeals court in San Diego reinstated another suit involving a migrant worker.

In that case, the widow and five children of a migrant worker sued Ichiro Kosha, an Oceanside strawberry grower, for negligence.

The worker, Humberto Barcenas, died in a 1994 fire that swept through his plastic-covered shanty. His colleague and co-plaintiff, Manuel Reyes, suffered multiple burns in the blaze.

Both men were from Oaxaca, Mexico, and had valid U.S. work permits.

A Superior Court judge had dismissed the suit filed by Reyes and Barcenas’ survivors, saying the men had accepted “an obvious risk” when they built their rickety shacks on property Kosha leased.

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But a three-judge panel disagreed. Kosha was bound by standards of the state Employee Housing Act because he provided portable toilets, running water and set rules, the court stated.

“The case extends to migrant workers the same rights that other people have: to live in dwellings that are habitable,” said San Diego attorney Terry Singleton, who represents the plaintiffs.

The two appellate court rulings were published decisions, so they can be cited as precedent.

The third case involved Garcia, a former cook for CaterCraft, a Los Angeles firm that maintains more than 50 catering trucks. She suffered third-degree burns and incurred $200,000 in medical bills after the 1995 accident.

Her attorney, Doug D. Shaffer of Santa Monica, contended that Garcia, a 37-year-old mother of three, was tossed about the vehicle after it overturned because she had to sit on a milk crate. The firm had removed the truck’s passenger seat, he said.

During the trial, Shaffer painted his client as a hard-working immigrant who woke at 3 a.m. five times a week, walked through dangerous neighborhoods to work, and put in 12-hour days--for $50--to support her children.

A jury deliberated for two hours before awarding Garcia $2.4 million. Lawyers for the company haven’t decided whether to appeal.

“If the jury believes that a person has come to America and is working hard and is doing a job that other Americans are reluctant to do, they are going to reward her,” Shaffer said. “Jurors saw someone who sacrificed and worked hard--not her immigration status.”

Times staff writer Davan Maharaj can be reached by e-mail at davan.maharaj@latimes.com.