Can a California employer reduce or eliminate overtime litigation exposure and employee-related overtime disputes and lawsuits?  Yes, even though California seems to lean toward the side of employees, the Watkins Firm can help you as an employer to significantly reduce and even eliminate overtime disputes.

3 Key Takeaways to help a California Employer Reduce or Eliminate Overtime Litigation Exposure:

• The best defense starts with a review of all existing documents and procedures, including the employee handbook, employment contracts, time cards, and policies regarding employee review, discipline, and/or termination.
• It is important to prevent the most common types of employer-related litigation in California: Wage and hour disputes and PAGA actions.
• Call an experienced employer defense attorney like the Watkins Firm for a free consultation the moment you think an employee may have an issue or is posturing for a battle, or if you are contacted by an outside agency or law firm seeking information or data regarding any worker.

Helping California Employers to Prevent Disputes and Litigation

A good defense often begins with a great offense!  Our experienced San Diego and California employer defense attorneys help our clients by reviewing all existing policies, procedures, employment contracts, and even time cards.  Overtime disputes often hinge on an employee assertion that the employer coerced them into unpaid overtime work.  They may attempt to claim that it was impossible to do the work required within a 40 hour work week, and therefore unreported night and weekend hours were required.  We work with our clients to reduce or eliminate opportunities for employees to assert these allegations while protecting against expensive wage and hour claims and PAGA actions.

Close The Door to Wage and Hour and PAGA Actions

The Watkins Firm helps our clients to close the door to wage and hour litigation and PAGA actions before your employees ever start work.  If there are gaps in existing policies and procedures or employment agreements, we help to fill in those gaps, and then ensure that proper training is implemented to ensure compliance.  The key is to have a clear, crisp policy at it relates to overtime, and to ensure that the policy is clearly communicated at every step in the process:

• The Employment Contract
• Orientation
• Employee Handbook
• Company Policies and Procedures Manuals
• Review, discipline, and termination policies, process controls, and documentation
• Time Cards

Pro-Tip: “There are class actions, PAGA wasn’t even heard of in 20 years ago. And now every seminar you hear about is on PAGA defense. There’s sexual harassment, used to be the young, the big game in town. And now you’ve got to check your paycheck stubs to make sure that they’re not spelled wrong or there’s a missed decibel point, or you’re going to get a class action lawsuit filed against you in, in a multitude of ways.

Obviously we have wage and hour disputes. Those are big. They’re everywhere. They’re big in California, they’re big nationally. Well, wage and hour and overtime are similar, but PAGA, a private attorney general claim against the employer is really heating up. There are law firms that just do plaintiff PAGA work, and they send out constant communications to every area of employee you can imagine. And if anyone’s thinking about leaving your employment, they’re going to be tempted to get a little severance pay involuntary.

And then misclassification of independent contractors. California keeps changing the law and the courts keep changing their interpretation of the California law. So yes, they do make it really hard to stay on top of that. Sexual harassment is always a scary thing because you can get sued for sexual harassment and lose, even though no one was actually harassed because you didn’t investigate it correctly or thoroughly. That’s a separate cause of action. Failing to investigate it according to the law, even if your investigation finds out that it was a false claim, which seems terrible, but it’s true. And then discrimination claims are always there. Retaliation again for somebody making a false claim. If you retaliate against them for lying about you and suing and lying about you, you’re still liable for retaliating against a liar. Again, terrible but true. And then general wrongful termination, how people are terminated and whether or not you comply, you can get stuck with 60 days of pay that you inadvertently didn’t know about.

The ones where you can get stuck for attorney’s fees are the ones you’re likely going to see in a lawsuit or a claim against you because the lawyers rarely go after the ones that are only break time, or only mischaracterization of how you write the paycheck.  If it’s not something with an attorney’s fees clause, you’re not going to see it. So let’s, let’s talk about attorney’s fees clauses and common overtime issues.

In a wage and hour dispute, the remedy is often for us fix the wage in the problem if there is one. And we do that rather quickly because we get so many of them every day.

So, let’s say you are the plaintiff’s lawyer, and you’re suing my client. Well the minute my client knows something, he’s going to tell me. I’m going to look at whatever he or she may have been doing, I’m going to fix it. It’s usually like the remedy is to fix the way the paycheck’s written or calculated or the breaks or whatever, I’ll fix it. We’ll tell our clients to pay the employee the extra $500 before the lawyer can file a lawsuit. And so if there’s no breach at the time of the lawsuit, there’s no attorney’s fees and the plaintiff lawyer’s case goes away.  He has no incentive to bring it!” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

Reduce or Eliminate Overtime Litigation Exposure and Associated Disputes or Lawsuits

Can a California employer reduce or eliminate overtime litigation exposure and associated PAGA actions, wage and hour disputes and lawsuits.  One example of a clear policy would be the requirement to have any and all overtime approved in writing by a manager or officer of the company, prior to any overtime work to be performed.  Policies should forbid non-exempt workers from doing any work related activities, or accessing work related systems after their shifts are completed.

The Watkins Firm will work with you to implement a time keeping system that includes a statement by the employee “under penalty of perjury.”  We work with our clients to legally structure the policies and procedures of the company, as well as the understanding and written compliance of the employees from the moment they begin interviewing to the moment of their departure as an employee.

Protecting and Defending San Diego Employers

It is possible to reduce or eliminate overtime litigation exposure and to prevent allegations of unpaid overtime from surfacing or moving forward. We invite you to review our podcast Episode 28 – Common Employer Disputes and Defenses as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today. Let’s plan a review of your business policies, procedures, contracts and documents.  We will work together to close gaps in your strategy and save valuable profit by eliminating exposure.

Meet Dan 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.