Practice Areas & Industries: Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Our labor and employment law practice group emphasizes preventive counseling and education as the keys to avoiding claims and controlling the rising costs of litigation. Our attorneys specialize in training management on all employment-related issues, and in strategizing with companies to create solutions for personnel and related problems. However, when reason and negotiation do not provide a satisfactory resolution, our lawyers have substantial experience in dismissing cases through summary judgment and winning cases through arbitration, bench and jury trials. We also appear regularly before government agencies such as the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Workers Compensation Appeals Board and the Employment Development Department. As a mark of our expertise and success in defending employers, we have dozens of clients who have returned for services for decades.
 
The labor and employment law practice group represents clients in both the private and public sectors, including employers in the high-tech and biotech, financial, hospitality, restaurant, health care, retail, personnel services, construction, manufacturing and agricultural industries, as well as educational institutions, transportation and other special districts, municipalities and other governmental entities. We draft and negotiate employment agreements and provide advice and litigation services in all aspects of employer/employee relationships, including:

• wage/hour matters and class action litigation
• wrongful termination cases
• employment discrimination
• sexual harassment claims
• misappropriation of trade secrets
• development of effective personnel policies/practices

The group's experienced and highly regarded lawyers have both the diversity and varied backgrounds necessary to counsel and defend employers in all employment-related matters. Luce Forward lawyers are leaders in the Labor and Employment Bar, having served in positions such as chair of the San Diego County Bar Association Labor and Employment Law Section. Our lawyers have taught university courses and lectured on employment law at several different law schools. The group's lawyers include former U.S. District Court and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judicial clerks.
 
Past speaking engagements have included participation in the California Employment Development Department's annual employment seminar and speaking panels for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Technical Assistance Programs, the Council on Education in Management, the San Diego Lawyers Club Sexual Harassment Task Force, and the Society for Human Resource Management.
 
Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, Retaliation Claims and Litigation
 
Luce Forward regularly obtains summary judgment determinations, which result in dismissal orders or favorable pre-trial settlements. Our lawyers also have successfully tried many cases to verdict. For example, we are local counsel to one of the largest fast-food operators in the world, defending employment discrimination claims at both the administrative and court level.
 
Representative Client Solutions

Class-Action Litigation
 
Our lawyers have extensive class-action experience in high profile cases involving hundreds of class members. We have represented dozens of companies faced with misclassification claims, and including a related group of clothing manufacturers in the Western Pacific, as well as companies engaged in retail, insurance, sales and the restaurant industry, among others. We recently obtained a defense jury verdict in a wage and hour class action, where our client, a courier delivery service, was sued by delivery drivers who contended that they should have been classified as employees and not as independent contractors. The class sought $20 million in compensation for overtime, meal and rest periods, business expenses, penalties, interest and attorneys' fees. We defeated a motion for class certification representing an organization in an action alleging improper training procedures, among other things, and another motion for class certification related to pregnancy and sick leave issues. We also defeated a class action alleging extensive overtime violations against a local company by defeating class certification, effectively disposing of the action. We also defended an insurance company against alleged violations of the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act in connection with the company's hiring practices.
 
Employment Law for Educational Institutions
 
We represent many institutions of higher learning in arbitrations and cases involving charges of discrimination. We also provide frequent counseling on issues involving faculty, staff and students of these institutions.