The volume of wage and hour cases has skyrocketed over the past few years as plaintiff’s attorneys search for additional sources of revenue. Are you searching for an experienced San Diego wage and hour defense lawyer? The Watkins Firm is a proven and highly recommended employer defense law firm based in San Diego. We have 40+ years of experience serving the business, science and tech, real estate and medical / healthcare communities here in San Diego and across California. Our clients value our responsiveness, and our proven strategies which resolve wage and hour disputes quickly and cost-effectively.
3 Things to Look For in a San Diego Wage and Hour Defense Lawyer
- Experience. Nothing can take the place of experience. This is especially true in the State of California, the most challenging state in which to be an employer based upon our extensive anti-employer laws, regulations, and requirements.
- Experience in PAGA actions and Class Action Defense. Your employment defense attorney must be prepared to defend a California employer in a class action lawsuit. Many lawsuits against an employer will be filed under the California Private Attorneys General Act or PAGA. Employees in these lawsuits are incentivized with part of the amounts won against the employer.
- Pro-active advice and counsel for a California employer. We keep our clients abreast of all changes to California and San Diego laws, regulations, ordinances, and employment-related duties.
Wage and Hour Dispute Defense
Federal and state wage and hour laws apply to everything from minimum wage to commission disputes, California Fair Pay Act violations and allegations of unpaid overtime. Disputes involving the distribution of tips, allegations of taking a portion of tips or the failure to provide rest and/or meal breaks are all further examples of a wage and hour dispute.
PAGA Actions – The Fastest Growing Source of Employer-Related Litigation in San Diego
In addition, employers need their experienced San Diego wage and hour defense lawyer at the Watkins Firm to protect them in California Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) cases. PAGA cases empower workers to act as an agent of the state, compensating them directly to search out and penalize all labor and employment related violations at your business.
Plaintiffs attorneys are actively marketing to current and past employees seeking anyone with a potential employment-related violation. Once they have a single client, PAGA allows them to actively recruit other current and previous employees in an attempt to create an expensive, time consuming class action. The plaintiff’s attorneys fees in these cases are a genuine and substantial risk.
We only defend employers. The Watkins Firm can help you to proactively reduce or eliminate any risk for a dispute or lawsuit in your workplace.
Pro-Tip: “Let’s talk about class actions. That’s how you take a mistake on the way somebody drafted someone’s paycheck in the tune of, let’s say $15 a week. That puts you in a class action that costs you three hundred thousand, $400,000 because of an accounting error, because your workers went into a class action. Now, had you had certain types of agreements in place, even some kinds of arbitration agreements, that’s where we’re at now on these laws. You could have cut this off also, had you had some lawyer 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 you shut it down right away.
Pro-Tip: “Let’s talk about class actions. That’s how you take a mistake on the way somebody drafted someone’s paycheck in the tune of, let’s say $15 a week. That puts you in a class action that costs you three hundred thousand, $400,000 because of an accounting error, because your workers went into a class action. Now, had you had certain types of agreements in place, even some kinds of arbitration agreements, that’s where we’re at now on these laws. You could have cut this off also, had you had some lawyer 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 you shut it down right away.Judges don’t really like these cases, and there’s a lot of technical reasons to throw them out because the firms bringing them to Court have seemed to have turned into sort of a shady PI lawyer, the person that hangs out in the hospital room. These kind of employment lawyers are starting to be like that. And so if they don’t follow all the rules and you get to court in the first couple of months and you file a motion saying you didn’t give the proper notice, you didn’t state the proper cause of action, the judge will throw it out.
In many cases, we are actually able to help our clients to simply take action to immediately remediate the problem. We can tell you the solution is to simply pay the extra $3,000 in wages. Send out amended pay stubs before you even have to answer the complaint. And guess what? All of the causes of action that have attorney’s fees in them are gone. Nobody wants to see you anymore because the attorneys can’t get paid. So yes, quick action gives your lawyer the right to do things that just destroy a case in the beginning.
When you do defense work, you want to get rid of cases as soon as possible. Nobody in business makes money just staying in litigation. Call us, and you describe what’s going on with a certain troubled employee. And we can tell you, like asking if a mole is skin cancer, ‘oh, that fact scenario doesn’t really fit something that I would go ahead and fight with them.’ Or we can say, ‘oh, this one looks bad because of the things they’re complaining about or just the general facts. I would handle it this way.’ And so you can turn a 20,000, or $30,000 lawsuit situation into empowerment where you can stand your ground or maybe you make some concessions because you got some advice from your lawyer. You need to know when you’ve got to worry about it and when you don’t. Our clients know we’ve already helped them take the steps necessary to stop these things from happening before they ever have a chance to start.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner
Our San Diego Wage and Hour Defense Lawyer Will Take Quick Action and Get Results
The litigious atmosphere surrounding employers in San Diego and throughout California requires extensive strategy, consistent application and monitoring. The attorneys at the Watkins Firm work with our clients to take immediate steps to remediate any genuine issues, mitigate damages, defeat the certification of a PAGA class action and resolve the underlying dispute quickly in a cost-effective manner.
If you are looking for a proven, experienced San Diego wage and hour defense lawyer, we invite you to take action and consider the Watkins Firm.
If you are searching for a highly recommended, proven defense attorney for San Diego wage and hour litigation we invite 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 today.
