Donna M. Mezias

Mezias, an Akin Gump partner, represents employers in all types of litigation including class action and individual discrimination cases. Her clients include many California and national employers, such as The Home Depot U.S.A. Inc., Marvell Technology Group Ltd., Climate Corp. and its parent Monsanto Co., AT&T Inc. and the San Francisco 49ers.

Over the past year she has served as lead counsel in successfully defending longtime client Home Depot in multiple class action lawsuits that featured closely watched issues such as complex wage and hour claims, employee misclassification allegations and Private Attorneys General Act actions.

“In the wage and hour space, I’ve done many class actions for Home Depot, and we’ve had a tremendous amount of success,” she said. “It’s always good to keep the client happy. We have very talented and sharp in-house counsel to partner with.”

In one recent outcome, Mezias successfully defended all claims in a complex California wage and hour class action involving sales consultants who were allegedly misclassified. The client’s exposure was “a healthy seven figures,” Mezias said. Previously, she had defeated class certification of claims for unpaid wages and overtime, improper calculation of sales commissions, meal, rest period and wage statement violations, expense reimbursements and waiting time penalties. She then won summary judgment on the last remaining class claim for unpaid mileage expenses, obtaining a ruling from U.S. District Judge Jesus G. Bernal of Riverside that Home Depot’s reimbursement policy complies with California law. Rogers v. Home Depot U.S.A. Inc., 5:14-cv-02069 (C.D. Cal., filed Oct. 6, 2014).

“When we get such a broad spectrum of claims in a complex case, I take a pretty deep dive in the first 90 days into what we think the evidence is going to be so we can form a strategy,” she said. “In Rogers, unpaid mileage was certified as a class claim, so instead of contesting it on class treatment grounds, we went the summary judgment route to knock it out. On the misclassification claim, we saw that fact issues would make summary judgment difficult. So our strategy from early on was to contest class treatment.

“The principal argument and evidence we presented showed that many potential class members spent time on outside activities, which is part of a test for exemption from overtime. So we could contend that this was not an appropriate claim on a class basis because you’d have to talk to every sales consultant — and that’s antithetical to class treatment.”

The result took time, but the victory was complete. “It was one of those cases where you can’t knock ’em out in one set of motions,” Mezias said. “It took a few years to get there, but we won the battles and we won the war.”

— John Roemer