Our firm has extensive experience in representing clients who are predominantly employers and/or high-level executives in threatened or actual litigation. We have litigated individual and class action employment-related claims and represented clients in audits before administrative agencies and in California’s state and federal courts, and in alternative dispute resolution, including private arbitration and mediation.

We have provided advisory services concerning complaints of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, as well as wage and hour claims filed with agencies including The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), Division of Labor Standards and Enforcement (DLSE), Employment Development Department (EDD), The federal Department of Labor (DOL), and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

We have helped companies and individual employers with claims under California law include violations of the following:

• The Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) prohibits actual or perceived discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and/or failure to prevent these claims based on a broad range of protected characteristics.
• The California Family Rights Act (CFRA), which is part of FEHA, prohibits discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and interference against an individual who exercises his or her right to family and medical leave under CFRA.
• The California Labor Code, for example, prohibits discrimination in employment based on public policy grounds, such as lawful off-duty conduct, gender-based wage discrimination, filing a claim with the California Labor Commissioner, filing a complaint, or exercising rights under California’s Occupational Safety and Health Act (Cal-OSHA).
• Wage and hour claims typically involve misclassification of independent contractors and exempt and nonexempt salaried employees that, if true, automatically violate numerous other wage and hour laws, including, without limitation, failure to pay all compensation due and owing timely, failure to comply with record-keeping obligations, failure to pay overtime, violation of meal and rest break laws, and inaccurate wage statements/violation of recordkeeping obligations.
• California’s Civil Code adopts the federal Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA) in defining misappropriation of trade secrets, for unlawful, unfair, or fraudulent acts or business practices, and several other federal and state-related claims. These claims are typically raised when a current or former employee uses non-public, proprietary Company information that damages his/her former employer. Unfair competition lawsuits are among the costliest to the Company.
• These include breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing, breach of employment obligations, fraud, invasion of privacy, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, assault, battery, false imprisonment, defamation, wrongful conduct in violation of fundamental public policies underlying Federal or State statutes or Constitution, etc.