Lawyers from both sides of the age discrimination lawsuit against Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will meet again today for an unplanned round of talks aimed at settling the lawsuit before it goes to trial. Previous efforts to settle the lawsuit had failed, but there appears to have been progress at a mediation session conducted Tuesday, leading to the addition of today’s mediation session. Lab spokesman Jim Bono declined to comment. Gary Gwilliam, the lead lawyer for the group of 130 former lab employees that have alleged that age discrimination led to them being singled out during a round of 440 layoffs in 2008, said the mediation session Tuesday lasted the entire day. “We’re in mediation and settlement talks are ongoing but I can’t comment beyond that,” he told NW&M Monitor.
Also this week, Alameda County (Calif.) Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman indefinitely postponed the start of the trial, which had been scheduled to begin Feb. 27, in order to give lawyers involved in the case more time to prepare after he opened the door in a Monday decision for the plaintiffs to overturn his January ruling that would have prevented the plaintiffs from using a “disparate impact” age discrimination claim—one of the cornerstones of the case against the lab.