Are you searching for an experienced, proven California PAGA defense attorney? Are you an employer in San Diego or across the State of California?  Have you been sued by an employee or employees under California’s Private Attorneys General Act or PAGA?  What do you need to immediately know in order to protect your interests and resolve this legal challenge?

The first thing you need to know is a PAGA claim allows your employees to legally bypass all class action defense provisions or arbitration protections in your employment agreements resulting in a potentially drawn-out and expensive legal battle.  The State of California incentivizes your employees by giving them a share of the proceeds they generate as a result of their PAGA action.  This results in what is basically a “fishing expedition” as the employee(s) (and their plaintiff’s attorneys) fan out inside your company in search of every misclassification, wage and hour, unfair competition and health and safety claim they can find.

This is why you need an experienced, proven California PAGA defense attorney who can help you to defend against a lawsuit or class action.  There are remedies available under administrative law which provide a strong legal defense, limit exposure and protect your legal rights as an employer under the law.  Our goal is to remedy all available issues, reduce or eliminate plaintiff’s attorneys fees and resolve the dispute as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.

Make no mistake.  A PAGA action is a substantial challenge and risk for any California employer.  PAGA claims quickly compound and can expose San Diego employers to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and potentially millions if your company employs hundreds of workers.  The most important elements to defending a PAGA action are immediate mitigation and response and a strong defense.  You need an experienced, proven California PAGA defense attorney at the Watkins Firm.

Pro-Tip: “I think that failure to act immediately is the biggest risk. You get a claim, you get a letter, you get a notice and you don’t take action right away. That’s your opportunity to cure, fix and get out of the way of the PGA case. The lawyers who are hoping to Sue you don’t make any money if you act quickly, but if you delay and push back or ignore them, then they gain bigger rights and more motivation.

PAGA actions are class actions. We do class action defense in many areas, including even organic labeling and other types of class actions in a PAGA suit or class action. What are a few of the best defensive strategies?  Well, most everybody knows about class certification. You can’t have a class unless you have like people in a like situation that have suffered the same harm. And a lot of times plaintiff lawyers will try to group everyone together in hopes of getting the judge to certify the class… so that it’s assumed that everyone has suffered the same harm. And most employers don’t treat each employee the same. I mean, they’re all individually hired and contracted for. And sometimes the problems that are being alleged are not universal. So we want to fight that right away. And we also want to do our discovery and find out if everybody in the company wants to really join this class.

What’s the worst case scenario. What’s the worst thing that can happen in a PAGA class action?

We don’t have success preventing the class certification and we are in the meat of it and our clients have some liability. That’s when we have to come up with strategies for settlement and mediation, and which mediators are knowledgeable in the community, in this kind of law, those who have a pulse understanding what are and are not reasonable resolutions. Of course the plaintiff’s lawyers are going to want as much as possible, but what’s fair? What’s reasonable? What can our clients afford?  What kind of curing measures we can put forward? And knowing that the actual judges that we have and how they’ve ruled in the past all come into play as we advise our clients on what’s the best way through or out of this. And that’s the worst case scenario. When we’re sitting there talking about giving away our clients’ money, for honest mistakes, that can be punitive in nature. That’s the hardest. And that’s the worst case scenario. And we try our hardest not to get to that point, but sometimes it does.

However, the BEST CASE is the client gets that notice, that little letter in the mail, contacts us right away.  We check everything out.  And if there’s anything wrong, we cure it. We fix it. And before the plaintiffs can even file an action, every possible issue they’ve complained about has been fixed, cured and remedied. So the motion to establish the class is denied. And, for the plaintiff’s counsel, the big payoff is gone. And once that plaintiff’s lawyer knows that they’re not going to make a lot of money on it, they usually don’t want to spend much time.

So we’ve got this letter that our clients brought us, and it’s time to answer the complaint. We’ve got several options. What do we do if we’re at the complaint stage and we haven’t been successful in curing and doing the other things? We want to make the case go away, we’ve got to answer the complaint. And when it comes to answering the complaint, of course you deny, in general, deny everything, but you also identify affirmative defenses. The definition of affirmative defense is it’s a new matter. It says, in addition to what the plaintiff put in the complaint, we have other reasons why they’re not entitled to anything. And these are our defenses. One would be when an employee breaches the contract he or she is suing on. You can’t expect the benefit of your bargain If you didn’t perform, right? The next one is the employee’s not hurt. They weren’t actually hurt. They’ve suffered no losses, no real damages.  And the members of the party they’re trying to bring forward, many of them suffered no damages. So they have no damages.

They shouldn’t be able to proceed. Also they’re not really in this class. They have no standing to sue. Although the courts keep expanding that , it’s still a valid defense. In fact, every one of our complaints has about 50 affirmative defenses in it. We identify things that might come up in discovery that we don’t know about, but we want to plead in advance in case they come to be true or evidence in the case. So, yes, it’s complex. And we are aware of the mandatory affirmative defenses. And also we identify ones that are not necessarily mandatory, but important in case someone says, ‘well, you never brought this up.’ It’s not relevant in trial. And you can point to your answer and say, ‘yes, your honor, it’s right here.’ – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

We invite you to review our podcast Episode 18 – Private Attorneys General Act as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.