The experienced business and litigation attorneys at the Watkins Firm provide defense for California employers in PAGA litigation.  California has witnessed a sharp rise in the number of PAGA related lawsuits and cases over the past few years.  Some are brought by “serial plaintiffs” who seem to repeatedly become involved in PAGA litigation.  Plaintiff’s attorneys advertise for disgruntled employees searching for a “doorway” into your company.  Once a valid complaint has been established, the PAGA action allows the investigation to recruit additional employees to join the lawsuit and expand into any applicable area of your business.

Defense for California employers in PAGA litigation is associated with California’s Private Attorneys General Act. PAGA allows your employees to serve as a proxy for the State of California, bypass arbitration and other clauses in the employment contract and pursue civil (read: financial) penalties for a variety of “offenses” including but not limited to wage and hour violations, health and safety violations, the misclassification of employees, even unfair competition actions.

There is good news regarding the defense for California employers in PAGA litigation and it is this: the Watkins Firm can seek remedies before the Court which not only reduce your exposure and liability as an employer, in many cases we may be able to correct the circumstances surrounding alleged violations and ultimately seek dismissal of the action altogether.

A strong PAGA defense requires immediate action on the part of the employer to seek the advice and counsel of the Watkins Firm.  The sooner we become involved in the process, the more likely a very successful resolution becomes.

Pro-Tip: “The Private Attorneys General Act has been around for a long time. It is sort of a catch all.  If you want to, you can bring an action as if you were the Attorney General for the State of California on behalf of Californians and sue somebody. And it’s been used in a lot of different ways. It’s also been used in something called Qui Tam, which is a Latin term for, whistleblower, to bring in an action on behalf of other parties. And that happens in different types of actions and these kind of actions are all around the United States. So they’re old and they’ve been used for different types of grievances throughout the history of the State of California. But right now they’re being used on behalf of employees. And when you do so you share some of the money with the State of California, and then you also get money for your clients and the state wins some money and they don’t have to pay their own Attorney General to do it. And also your clients get money and you get some more rights where as a regular class action might be more difficult for you to bring, but in a regular class action, you don’t have to pay the state.

Typically it’s wage an hour wage an hour, and everything that goes with that reporting classification, whether you are getting proper rest time, meal time, any possible technical failure by the employer and how they treat the employees can end up as a PGA violation.

Health, and safety can go that way. It can also go through OSHA, but it’s basically anything you can imagine in the employment arena all the way down to unfair competition.

I think that failure to act immediately is the biggest risk and exposure for an employer in a PAGA action. 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.

Everybody knows about class certification. You can’t have a class and you have, 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 a certified, 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.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

If you are concerned about PAGA lawsuits or require attorneys with extensive experience in defense for California employers in PAGA litigation and class action lawsuits we invite you to review our podcast Episode 18 –Defending Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.