Are you searching for wage and hour and PAGA employer defense attorneys in California?  The Watkins Firm has more than four decades of experience defending wage and hour class action lawsuits and other employer defense related matters.  Wage and hour lawsuits such as unpaid overtime disputes, and PAGA actions represent a significant financial risk which may threaten the viability of your company.  Our experienced and proven employer defense and class action attorneys work to immediately mitigate or remediate (eliminate altogether) the risks and financial exposure you face, remove incentive for plaintiff’s attorneys, or prevent the certification of a class and protect our clients from the potentially devastating exposure created by any lawsuit or class action.

Areas of Exposure in Wage and Hour and PAGA Actions

The Private Attorneys General Act or PAGA act encourages employees to act as a “proxy” for the State of California in order to recover funds for the state from our employers.  PAGA actions are especially risky as they provide an opportunity to bypass existing arbitration clauses in employment contracts.  PAGA also provides the opportunity to involve other employees in order to grow the class (and your resulting exposure).

There are several potential areas of exposure for San Diego employers under federal and state wage and hour laws.  These include but are not limited to:

• Unpaid overtime
• Minimum wage violations
• Commissions disputes
• Meal and rest break issues
• Donning & doffing issues
• Uniforms

 

Plaintiff’s Lawyers Actively Advertise for These Cases

Plaintiff’s lawyers actively advertise for these cases.  The reason – BIG MONEY.  When plaintiff’s lawyers hear of an issue within your company related to a wage and hour or PAGA claim it is in their financial interest to fan the flame and attempt to create a lucrative “class” of cases against your company.  They urge their client to contact their former workers and even those who are still under your employ in an attempt to garner a large number of allegedly similar cases.  The plaintiff’s attorneys will next approach the court and present “representative cases” which they assert represent a huge class of plaintiffs with similar lawsuits.

Defending Wage and Hour and PAGA Class Action Lawsuits Requires Immediate Action

Defending these claims requires immediate action on the part of any employer.  The second you even begin to hear about or suspect an issue or dispute with an employee you need to contact the experienced employer defense attorneys at the Watkins Firm or call (858) 535-1511 to speak with an experienced employer defense attorney for a free, thorough consultation.  The fastest way to either resolve a dispute entirely or to substantially limit associated risk and financial exposure is to get our experienced, proven legal team working on mitigating existing issues and taking action to resolve the matter.

Our experienced California wage and hour and PAGA employer defense attorneys have significant and proven experience defending wage and hour and PAGA class action lawsuits in San Diego and across Southern California.  We work to dismantle the class allegations contained within the plaintiff’s case.  We work to prove the “representative cases” are actually quite different and therefore no class action exists.  We diffuse the common nature of the class which removes the incentive for a plaintiff’s attorney to move forward with the case.  We work with our clients to prove existing policies and procedures and their consistent application make the foundations of the lawsuit untenable.

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, 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 employees get money and some more rights where as a regular class action might be more difficult for a plaintiff to bring, but in a regular class action, you don’t have to pay the state.

We represent employers. So we’re always trying to do whatever we can to help our clients when it comes to this threat, which is active. And basically there’s a lot of plaintiff’s lawyers out there treating themselves as bounty hunters and going after these companies. You have to make sure you’re fair to the people that are part of the class. So it’s very complicated and how you handle it in the beginning and throughout the case is important. You can’t just hire a lawyer to go out there and be really aggressive and expect a great result. All you’re going to end up with is a higher bill and higher risk, and nobody being scared away.

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 PAGA violation. 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 PAGA 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.

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 a California employer looking for local attorneys with experience with wage and hour and PAGA employer defense attorneys in California we invite you to review our podcast Episode 18 – Private Attorneys General Act or 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.