Maria Z. Stearns

Maria Z. Stearns

IRVINE - As part of the legal equivalent of a bomb squad, Maria Z. Stearns knows the best option is always to diffuse a situation before it gets to a bad point, and that is what her legal practice is all about.

“I try to be a problem solver. One of the attorneys gave me a placard that said ‘fixer of everything’ and that was the biggest compliment,” she said, laughing. “I try to do that in terms of helping my clients, so I would say I am a de-escalator.”

Stearns, employment department chair at Rutan & Tucker, LLP, is sought after by employers doing business in California because of her approach to defending wage and hour class actions and PAGA claims, along with her skill to mitigate risk.

She says she evaluates the risks and costs of lengthy litigation against early settlements and manages the positive rapport she has developed with the plaintiffs’ bar as the springboard for creative and efficient results for her clients.

Stearns values the opportunity of mentoring associates at her firm and considers her style to be very direct. “I love what I do in terms of helping my clients and constantly learning. Every case that gets in front of me is an opportunity for my client to learn how to be better,” she said.

Her own experience as a mom of three has changed the firm’s paid maternity and paternity leave benefits, including approval of a ramp-down/up policy for extended leaves.

Stearns considers COVID-19 to have changed the playing field in the realm of employment. “This is a really challenging time for employers. There’s a shortage of workers along with a lot of work to be done. In particular, for the ones I represent, restaurants and hospital groups are under tremendous pressure”.

In one of her recent cases, Stearns represented Laguna Beach-based restaurant Broadway By Amar Santana in wage and hour litigation and was substituted into the case in January 2020. Nelson v. Broadway By Amar Santana, 30-2016- 00888538 (Orange County Super. Ct., filed Nov. 21, 2016).

“They were headed in a very bad direction,” she said. “The owner knew me and I knew when the case was filed, so I reached out, but he went with someone else. So in the midst of this situation, he calls me, and I said, ‘Oh, boy.’”

Maria leveraged her reputation with the opposing counsel to “dig the client out of this real, real bad mess they had gotten into.” The settlement was reached on an individual basis with installment payments during COVID-19’s lockdown, the most vulnerable time for the restaurant.

“Broadway is this amazing restaurant that was going to be closed and nobody wants that. That doesn’t help anyone,” she said. “But the important thing is those conversations needed to happen, and now the opposing counsel was willing to have them.”

--Federico Lo Giudice