Are you a San Diego or California business owner or employer who is searching for an experienced attorney or law firm who know how to defend an unpaid overtime dispute in California? In these litigious times, winning an unpaid overtime case in California requires skilled attorneys with a track record of success defending employers in these matters.
Important Takeaways About How to Defend an Unpaid Overtime Dispute in California:
- The most important keys to successfully defend an unpaid overtime dispute in California are documentation and immediate action.
- Maintain an up-to-date and thorough employee handbook and policies and procedures.
- Contact an attorney at the Watkins Firm the moment you think there might be an issue with a worker or a potential unpaid overtime dispute.
The experienced employer defense attorneys at the Watkins Firm have more than 40 years of proven, successful experience helping our clients to avoid the rising tide of unpaid overtime litigation clogging local courts. We only represent employers, and our clients appreciate this focus and our unique approach to resolving employment disputes in a timely and cost-effective manner.
The Keys to Unpaid Overtime Disputes
Can the actions your workers and former workers take outside of your own established policies and procedures create unpaid overtime exposure? Unfortunately yes, but you can take prompt, effective action to correct these situations.
The keys to unpaid overtime disputes and litigation are documentation and immediate action on the part of the employer. California employers should be thoroughly documenting everything these days. This includes but is not limited to:
- notes to the file
- emails to yourself capturing crucial conversations and a summary of what happened, and
- the actions you and the employee agreed (or did not agree) to take.
We suggest that clients pay close attention to any dispute early in the process. The moment you realize you may have a unpaid overtime dispute or any other worker-related issue take a deep breath, there are many steps in this process and a lot you can do to improve the outcome. The experienced employer defense attorneys at Watkins Firm have been defending employers and winning local, regional, and national cases on behalf of employers since the 1980’s.
The first step is to call the Watkins Firm for a free, confidential and substantive consultation with one of our employer defense attorneys at (858) 535-1511. This complimentary call will provide insight into your unique situation, an understanding of the potential risk(s) you are facing and some potential actions you can take to immediately make the situation better, and in some cases, remediate the situation altogether.
Taking action early in the dispute greatly increases the opportunity to remediate or mitigate the situation entirely in order to avoid litigation, resolve the dispute quickly and efficiently and remove contingent liabilities.
How Your Watkins Firm Employer Defense Attorney Can And Will Help
Our attorneys advise our employer clients and help them to develop strategies that eliminate the ability for overtime disputes to ever arise. Recent changes in federal and state laws require employers in San Diego and throughout California to be more vigilant than ever at maintaining policies and procedures and an employee handbook that clearly establish expectations and a formal process for seeking prior approval prior to working any overtime hours.
Your Watkins Firm employer defense attorney can and will help you to evaluate the exposure associated with employee complaints or a letter from outside plaintiffs’ counsel, and develop an action plan to quickly and effectively respond. The number of PAGA lawsuits has substantially increased in recent years. What seems like an isolated issue can quickly become an expensive class action lawsuit. Ask about the Watkins Firm’s unique strategies to protect our clients and prevent PAGA actions and other employee-related disputes from ever arising in the first place. If you have received correspondence from outside counsel you need to know there is a clock, it is ticking, and you only have a very limited time before things quickly and irrevocably worsen.
Pro-tip: “The state of California has hired or licensed a whole bunch of lawyers out there to be bounty hunters, and instead of funding any regulation and enforcement, they just said, we can say whatever we want. And they’ll be a lawyer out there who wants to get attorney’s fees out of an employer and be a bounty hunter to try to catch you at the tiniest mistakes and make you pay dearly for it.
Every California employer needs to have a good lawyer who helps you stay up to speed and take those little technical matters seriously, because it doesn’t cost much to be in compliance. It really doesn’t. But it costs so much to get caught. Usually you don’t get caught for a few months and before you know it, you could literally lose hundreds of thousands of dollars for an accounting error or the way you put your paychecks out or your refusal or failure to put up a little sign in your break room. All those little things. There’s some lawyer out there – Mr. Bounty Hunter – looking for you to try to collect five, 10, $15,000 in fees for tiny mistakes.
That’s how you take a mistake on the way somebody drafted someone’s paycheck to the tune of, let’s say $15 a week. That puts you in a class action that costs you $300,000, $400,000 because of an accounting error, and because they went into a PAGA class action. Now, had you had certain types of agreements in place, even some kinds of arbitration agreements, we could help you to have them in place and prevent all of that.
That’s really where we’re at now on these laws. You could have cut this off also, had you had one of our old, experienced lawyer for employers you could talk to about your procedures or maybe an outside accounting service to review it or a CPA or our HR person, someone you can call if there’s any questions. Or your staff can call, then you won’t have this problem. And if you do, then we can help you shut it down right away.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner
An Employer Can Win an Unpaid Overtime Dispute in San Diego and Southern California
Yes, an employer can win an unpaid overtime dispute in San Diego and Southern California. As you know, many of the cards are stacked against you. You will need some help. Fast action and documentation are the keys to success. Your employer defense attorney at the Watkins Firm can help to resolve existing disputes in a timely and cost-effective manner and prevent future allegations from ever arising. If you are an employer facing allegations of unpaid overtime weinvite you to review our podcast Episode 39 – What Keeps Employers Up at Night as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation todayand learn about the consistent actions that are required to protect your company, and the policies and procedures that must underpin them. Ensure compliance with all employment law changes on a federal, state and local level.
Meet Daniel Watkins:
Daniel W. Watkins is a true people person who sincerely listens. He cares deeply about what others are going through. Dan enjoys digging into the facts and finding creative solutions to problems. He contributes his insights candidly and constructively.
Dan’s interest in people make him deeply invested in every relationship and his exuberant personality makes him a true litigator. Dan fights for his clients with a fierce and calculated commitment.
Dan has practiced in the areas of business, medical practices and healthcare business, high tech/science, real estate and employment defense law since 1987. He is a trusted litigation strategist and true trial attorney with over 50 jury and bench trials to his credit. Dan has successfully represented both large companies and individuals and achieved substantial victories in well-publicized trials throughout California and the U.S.
He is experienced in business and corporate formation and administration, as well as all forms of alternative dispute resolution, including binding arbitration and mediation.
THE ROAD TO BECOMING A BUSINESS LAWYER AND LITIGATOR
Dan has almost 40 years of experience working with, for and against some of the largest insurance companies in the country. He has successfully tried and litigated cases in the areas of Healthcare Compliance, Commercial Litigation, Unfair Business Practices, Fraud, Breach of Contract, Battery, Premises Liability, Product Defect, Medical Malpractice, Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, Construction Defect, as well as Unfair Competition, Defamation, and Trade Secrets.
In December 2003, Dan commenced litigation against Health South Surgery Centers-West, Inc and its’ subsidiaries, exposing the company’s extensive mismanagement and misconduct of its’ surgery centers. Dan has also been asked by some of California’s largest municipalities and corporations to conduct legally required investigations into matters involving alleged employment discrimination and harassment.
