Eric B. Kingsley

In 1997 Kingsley joined the firm his father, who is now retired, had operated as a sole practitioner since 1981. Today he’s the managing partner of the eight-lawyer boutique that represents employees in California in cases over sexual harassment, wage and hour violations, wrongful termination, discrimination, retaliation and other employment law violations.

“From the time I took my first employment case, I really liked the practice area,” Kingsley said. “I filed my first class action in 2000.”

In March 2020 he argued and won a state Supreme Court case over a key labor question that was a matter of first impression: The justices unanimously affirmed that settlement of individual wage claims in a Private Attorneys General Action does not strip an employee of standing to pursue broader PAGA remedies. Kim v. Reins International California Inc., S246911 (Ca. S. Ct., op. filed March 12, 2020).

The high court reversed both a trial court and an appellate panel after Kingsley warned that affirmance “could spell the end of litigation” under PAGA. Defendants could simply offer plaintiffs a low-ball figure to settle and thereby avoid potentially huge PAGA awards, he said.

In his argument Kingsley reminded the justices of PAGA’s origins and said it “filled that void” created by arbitration’s barrier to class actions.

Since the decision, he said he’s been pleasantly surprised to see the case cited often. “It’s like seeing your kid graduate from college,” he said. “The case stands for the proposition that it’s the state’s claim, and an individual’s settlement has no effect on that.”

In a current matter, Kingsley is battling at the Court of Appeal over a PAGA Labor Code enforcement case he said was “hijacked” by another law firm. Hernandez v. SFM LLC, D077547 (4th DCA, filed April 8, 2021). The defendant operates Sprouts Farmers Markets Inc.

Kingsley’s case was over clerk seating issues. Another firm had a meal and rest break matter. “The other firm sought to settle and added in the seating allegations we had on an ex parte basis,” he said. A trial judge allowed it and denied Kingsley’s motion to set aside the settlement.

“One month before trial, Sprouts notified [my clients] that it extinguished their claims through settlement in the present case,” Kingsley wrote in his opening appellate brief. He protested that without close judicial oversight of PAGA settlements, settling parties could undermine Labor Code enforcement actions by engaging in “reverse auctions” and other abuses to avoid accountability.

“So it ends up that I’m more mad at the other plaintiffs’ firm than I am at the defendant,” Kingsley said. “They worked underhanded in the cover of darkness. We’re in mediation with them, but we’re going to need an appellate ruling on this, and I think we have the better arguments.”

— John Roemer