Richard J. Simmons

Richard J. Simmons

LOS ANGELES - In addition to his practice representing employers in wage and hour, discrimination and wrongful discharge lawsuits, Richard J. Simmons is a prolific author and speaker. He participates in dozens of speaking engagements each year and has written more than 20 books about employment law, including the text widely considered as one of the most influential and important in its space, Wage and Hour Manual for California Employers.

Simmons recently secured a significant win for a restaurant chain with nearly a hundred locations across California. Plaintiffs filed a proposed class action and PAGA complaint alleging various types of wage and hour claims.

“This lawsuit was filed by a plaintiffs’ firm that is what I would call a mill, filing boilerplate lawsuits–the same claim hundreds of times across different companies and industries, just changing the names,” he said.

The restaurant group “absolutely had compliant policies, they did everything right, and they spent a lot of energy coming up with lawful policies,” Simmons said. “Nonetheless, because they are a big company with thousands of employees, they became the target of litigation.”

After five years of litigation, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge denied class certification. In addition to finding each of the named plaintiffs inadequate, the court determined that the plaintiffs’ firm was also inadequate to represent the proposed class. The court agreed that pervasive conflicts of interest permeated the proposed class.

“We submitted declarations of over 80 members of the proposed class who fully supported our case that our client did everything right,” Simmons said. “Plaintiffs’ side submitted 15. When we investigated, they had included misstatements in a number of declarations.”

As a result, about half of those declarations were withdrawn, and the remaining declarations were contradictory and largely discredited, he said. Another individual that was withdrawn as a plaintiff signed a declaration for the defense stating plaintiff’s counsel had pressured and harassed her to sign a false declaration submitted to the court without reading it. She claimed she had never even authorized them to name her as a plaintiff.

“This was spectacular in its implications,” Simmons said.

Judges are usually reluctant to find opposing counsel inadequate, Simmons said, but did so in this case.

“Justice really did prevail, and that’s gratifying. And we also sent a message to the plaintiffs’ bar–you can’t engage in underhanded tactics and expect to get away with it forever,” he said. “We practice law very aggressively, we work tirelessly for our clients, but we don’t cheat.”

--Jennifer Chung Klam