IANAL, but I'm fairly confident that you're wrong about CA requiring severance pay under the WARN act, and I don't think you should be giving legal advice if you're not a lawyer. Your post can mislead a lot of people on HN.
An employer must give notice 60-days prior to a plant closing, layoff or relocation. In addition to the notifications required under federal WARN, notice must also be given to the Local Workforce Investment Board, and the chief elected official of each city and county government within which the termination, relocation or mass layoff occurs. (California Labor Code Section 1401)
No one gives notice because of the risk that employees will do something malicious and instead just pay out the 60 days(with benefits including vacation accrual). I've done 3 sets of layoffs at my old company as a manager and was eventually layed off. At non California locations and offices that were too small to fall under WARN, we terminated employees with no severance except one month that was attached to an agreement not to sue. BTW, nothing i said was legal advice just simply stating that 3 months is standard for California.
Also, you did the exact same thing he/she did when you said you didn't think the warn act requires severance so even if what he/she did was giving legal advice, your comment would fall under the exact same category.
This isn't a courtroom; they use agreements. I could be parsey to hunt down and list all the exceptions, but my point is true for the general case of legal discussions on the Internet. "If you have no client relationship with the person offering the advice" just seemed kind of clunky, you know?
