Professional Experience
Mr. Johnson is a litigation associate in the Los Angeles office. His practice includes all areas of general business and commercial litigation, with a particular focus on labor and employment law and class action defense in state and federal courts and before state administrative agencies. He has quickly acquired substantial experience in these practice areas and realized a great deal of success.
Mr. Johnson's experience encompasses work on jury trials and arbitrations, taking and defending depositions, drafting and arguing case dispositive motions, drafting class certification oppositions and class settlement approval papers, and presiding over mediations in the successful defense of individual and class cases. In the employment arena, Mr. Johnson has employed these skills to successfully defend employers against claims for wage and hour violations, discrimination, wrongful termination, harassment, retaliation, trade secret misappropriation, and failure to accommodate. Mr. Johnson has also assisted in the successful defense of companies in the healthcare, insurance, direct marketing, financial service and manufacturing industries in class action, unfair competition, breach of contract and fraud cases in state and federal court.
Outside of work, Mr. Johnson has been a mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America since 2008, and has served on the Board of Directors of the National Teen Leadership Program since 2010.
Representative Matters
The following lists some of Mr. Johnson's more notable representative matters:
· Member of in-court trial team that successfully secured a defense judgment in a highly publicized month long jury trial brought by Elgin Baylor against the Los Angeles Clippers. The Clippers' former general manager alleged claims for age discrimination, wrongful discharge and retaliation. After just 3 hours of deliberation the jury unanimously ruled in the Team's favor on all claims.
· Second chaired arbitration before JAMS in defense of the Clippers in breach of contract action brought by its former head coach and general manager.
· Assisted in successful defense of trade secret misappropriation, wrongful termination, fraud and breach of contract case brought by former employee against video game company. Case dismissed following order granting summary judgment. Affirmed on appeal.
· Assisted in securing denial of class certification in wage and hour putative class case brought by employees of grocery store chain alleging failure to provide meal and rest breaks.
· Assisted in successful defense of disability and pregnancy discrimination, harassment and failure to accommodate case brought by former employee against grocery store chain. Case dismissed following order granting summary judgment.
· Assisted in successful defense of class action alleging violation of California's eavesdropping statute based on call monitoring of customer calls. After assuming defense of case after the court certified a class, the trial court granted motion for summary judgment as to the class claim.
· Assisted in defense of an Internet marketing company in a case alleging that it violated the California Unfair Competition Law by subscribing consumers to its premium text message service without their consent. After disposing of the three of the four named plaintiffs claims on summary judgment, the trial court approved a nationwide class settlement.
· Assisted in successful challenge to insurance code regulations relating to the underwriting and cancellation of health insurance policies on behalf of a trade association composed of health insurance companies in California. The court issued a writ of mandate directing the Department of Insurance to withdraw the challenged regulations.
· First chaired two day evidentiary hearing before the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, successfully appealing ruling that employee was qualified to receive unemployment insurance benefits.
Memberships & Activities
Admitted to practice in all courts in California, as well as the United States District Courts for the Central and Northern Districts of California, and the United States Court of Appeals for Ninth Circuit.