Qiaojing "Ella" Zheng

SAN FRANCISCO - Qiaojing "Ella" Zheng started Sanford Heisler's Asian American litigation and finance practice informally soon after she joined the firm as an associate in 2014. Born and raised in China's Zhejiang province, where she obtained her first law degree, she was the only lawyer in the firm with native fluency in Mandarin and a deep understanding of the culture.

"I just started doing a lot of cases from the Asian American community," she said. Even now there are relatively few bilingual plaintiffs-side lawyers who can represent workers in the community. "So over time, I became the go-to litigator for Asian Americans encountering issues in the workplace."

The firm formalized the practice group in 2019 and put Zheng, by then a partner, as its chair. Earlier this year, she also became the comanaging partner of its Bay Area offices.

She primarily represents plaintiffs in individual and class action employment cases. But as a former transactions attorney with a broad family background in finance, she also handles financial matters. She represents both China-based businesses and local companies being launched by Asian Americans.

It's important that those companies "do things right from the getgo in the U.S.," she said. So her practice group advises them on regulatory, compliance and employment issues.

Zheng represented a securities brokerage from China in obtaining a broker-dealer license here. "My team and I worked for them for three years and finally got the license for them" in March 2018, she said. The company, called Tiger Brokers, had its IPO the following year.

Zheng is primarily a litigator, and on that side of her practice last year, she won an $8.3 million arbitration award for her client. The award included $650,000 in punitive damages and $3.4 million in attorneys' fees.

"It was a really terrific win because arbitration is really not a forum for a plaintiff, especially for plaintiff employees, because it's designed to work for the company," she said. Chen v. InnoGrit Corp., 1110024169 (JAMS, decided May 17, 2021).

Her client had been a top executive at semiconductor developer Marvell Technology. Inc. He and a close colleague left to form a new company, but they soon disagreed on her client's share of equity.

During a 10-day hearing in 2020, Zheng had to cope with translation issues and cultural nuances. "In this case, those were particularly challenging because a lot of the fundamental promises, the cofounders' agreement, were not in writing," she said. "Under the Chinese business culture, when you trust someone... you wouldn't say, 'Let's put something in writing.'"

Not all of Zheng's clients are Asian or Asian American. For instance, she represented an African American employee suing a tech company.

Last August, she won a $2.85 million settlement in an important PAGA case for another client, Teresa Brooke, who had been the chief nursing officer at a behavioral health hospital in Santa Rosa operated by Signature Healthcare Services. The case alleged that understaffing and related issues caused pervasive Cal-OSHA violations at the hospital. Brooke v. Aurora Behavioral Healthcare- Santa Rosa, SCV-261926 (Sonoma Super. Ct., filed Feb. 2, 2018).

"It's very significant because it's probably the first PAGA case or the largest PAGA case involving health care workers in a behavioral hospital," Zheng said.