Glenn A. Danas

Danas, who specializes in arguing appeals in employee lawsuits, said he has "always identified with the underdog and with working people."

At Cornell University, he majored in industrial and labor relations, since he thought unions were "very inspiring." After getting his law degree from Emory University in 2001, he spent seven years representing companies in antitrust, securities and trademark disputes. But then he shifted to employment law, first at Initiative Legal Group in Los Angeles and then moving to Capstone in 2012.

"To me, employment law is a matter of equity," he said. "Antitrust and intellectual property involve equity too, of course, but the social issues are less palpable."

Danas has argued more than two dozen cases in state appellate courts, the California Supreme Court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In one of his best-known cases, Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles LLC, Dana won a ruling from the state Supreme Court that companies cannot use arbitration agreements to stop workers from suing them in cases involving the state's Private Attorneys General Act, which allows workers to sue on behalf of the state if their employer is violating state labor laws.

If the workers are acting as agents of the state, the court held, it would be contrary to public policy to force them into arbitration, no matter what waivers they previously signed.

"That case really changed the calculus of class action waivers," said Danas, who has since successfully argued against CLS's petition for a hearing at the U.S. Supreme Court. "If the courts had held the waiver was enforceable for PAGA actions, the entire field of aggregate litigation could have disappeared."

In another appellate case, Baumann v. Chase Investment Services Corp., Danas successfully argued before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that PAGA suits cannot be transferred from state courts to federal courts under the federal Class Action Fairness Act.

Danas is currently preparing arguments for the California Supreme Court in Williams v. Marshalls, regarding when plaintiffs in a PAGA suit can start the discovery process. In that case, named plaintiff Michael Williams asked the Marshalls clothing chain to hand over the names and contact information of 16,000 store employees. But the trial judge ruled that Marshalls should not have to turn over such information until Williams provided a more thorough legal and factual basis for his suit.

"This case will have a lot of impact, since there's never been any appellate decision laying out how discovery in this type of case should move forward," Danas said. "That's what makes so many of these appellate cases so exciting."

— Dean Calbreath