Mary Dollarhide

Dollarhide concentrates her DLA Piper LLP (US) practice on the defense of wage and hour class actions filed under federal and state wage and hour laws, including the federal WARN Act, which requires employers to provide advance notice of plant closings and mass layoffs.

Clients include Morgan Stanley Co., McKesson Corp., Teleperformance USA, AMN Healthcare Services LLC., General Electric Co., IBM Corp., Aetna Inc., Equinix Inc., Goldman Sachs' Archon Group, the American Red Cross and Qualcomm Inc.

She's currently defending at the state Supreme Court an important win for employers in a meal and rest period class action. In November 2018, a state appellate panel affirmed Dollarhide's successful summary judgment motion in a case dealing with both the rounding of recorded work time and alleged meal and rest period violations at a healthcare services and staffing company.

The panel, voting 3-0, held Dollarhide's client had a rounding policy for times punched on a time clock that conformed to state law because "on average, it favors neither overpayment nor underpayment" of workers. Donohue v. AMN Healthcare Services LLC., D071865 (4th DCA, filed Feb. 21, 2017).

The workers successfully sought high court review. Dollarhide said by email, "Our same team that briefed the matter below will handle the Supreme Court papers. I will be arguing for AMN. The court will review compensation for all time worked as reflected in time rounding, including time punches surrounding meal periods. The court will also review the lower court's affirmance of summary judgment on the rest period claim where plaintiff failed to provide any evidence that AMN failed to authorize and permit rest periods consistent with California law."

She added, "This is a unique case, in that it was decided on the merits, after a class action was certified." The outcome will determine the applicability of rest period premiums in the absence of a uniform policy or practice to deny such breaks. Donohue v. AMN Healthcare Services LLC, S253677 (SCOCAL, filed Jan. 22, 2019).

Dollarhide represented defendants in three related mass actions involving truckers at the Port of Los Angeles. After some plaintiffs settled but others did not, Dollarhide's team took 96 depositions, issued offers of compromise to nearly all the remaining plaintiffs and attacked perjured statements made in plaintiffs' individual discovery responses. That led all but a handful of them agreeing to settle on terms favorable to the defendants. The lead case is Lopez v. PDS Trucking, BC540537 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed March 26, 2014).

Along with establishing that various plaintiffs perjured themselves, "it also came out that some plaintiffs had never even driven a truck," Dollarhide said. "We gained leverage sufficient to settle the cases only after we committed to taking the depositions of every mass action plaintiff and to pressure testing previously sworn interrogatory responses. To resolve big matters, it takes a commitment to really work the case."

-- John Roemer