Brian C. Sinclair

Achieving a rare pro-employer outcome, Sinclair successfully argued before the state Supreme Court last year that unpaid wage awards are not civil penalties and cannot be recovered through Private Attorney General Act claims.

The high court's unanimous ruling was one of the few management-side wins handed down by the justices in 2019. It closed the door on individual plaintiffs seeking to recover lost wages under Labor Code Section 558 without the California Labor Commissioner's intervention. ZB N.A. and Zions Bancorporation v. Superior Court (Lawson), S246711 (Ca. S. Ct., op. filed Sept. 12, 2019).

"It's hard to get a victory on the employer's side in the California Supreme Court," said Sinclair, who represents clients in complex employment litigation matters, including individual and class action wage and hour claims, misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition disputes and retaliation, discrimination and harassment claims. "It's extremely gratifying to get a unanimous opinion."

Associate Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar wrote for his colleagues that the PAGA system can indeed be used in some cases to end-around compelled arbitration, but not to recover lost wages. "An employee's predispute agreement to individually arbitrate her claims is unenforceable where it blocks an employee's PAGA claim from proceeding," he concluded. "But a PAGA claim does not include unpaid wages under section 558."

Sinclair said that once he obtained the ruling in the case, which centered on a bank employee's claims she was denied overtime and minimum wages, meal and rest periods, timely wage payments and other payments, the plaintiff's lawyers were quick to throw in the towel. "Opposing counsel got in touch to reduce their settlement demands by many millions of dollars," he said. The case settled in February 2020.

Sinclair has long stressed the importance to him and his clients of dealing with fresh complaints quickly and efficiently when possible. "If there's no early silver bullet, you look for a practical way to defend," he said--even if it means taking the matter all the way to the Supreme Court.

An example of a swift resolution came in the case of a restaurant server who claimed she and others were not paid overtime wages, among other things. Sinclair persuaded the district court to grant the restaurant's motion to dismiss all class and collective action aspects of the case. Amador-Stewart v. Snooze HIC LLC, 3:18-cv-01604 (C.D. Cal., filed July 16, 2018).

"We argued that from the record, her claims were not plausible," Sinclair said. "The court gave her leave to amend, and she tried it again and we opposed it again and the court agreed with us. The case settled on an individual basis very favorably to my client. There was no class action."

-- John Roemer