Maria C. Rodriguez 

Maria C. Rodriguez defends large corporations, especially in the entertainment industry, in employment lawsuits and class actions. She also advises and trains clients on complying with employment law, helps them with union litigation and disputes, and recommends strategies on dealing with pending legislation.

But the bulk of her work is litigation, and that has been going well. Specifically, she said, “We’ve had a lot of good times in class actions lately.”

One recent class action resulted in a published opinion in October that she has already cited as precedent in other matters she is handling. Limon v. Circle K Stores, Inc., 2022 DJDAR 11132 (Cal. App. 5th Dist., dec’d Oct. 25, 2022).

The case began as a federal class action against her client, Circle K stores. The plaintiffs sought as much as $300 million for what Rodriguez labeled technical violations in the company’s new-employment paperwork package. The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires that when an employer has a new hire sign an authorization form allowing it to conduct a background check, the authorization must be on its own sheet of paper or computer page without any other material, she said.

But a Circle K contractor had added a short liability waiver to the form it provided to the chain’s new workers. That gave rise to the lawsuit.

When Rodriguez deposed the named plaintiff, she asked him whether he had signed authorization forms prior to starting each of the eight jobs he’d had before Circle K. He said yes.

Then in a motion for summary judgment, she argued to the court that since the plaintiff had been hired all nine times, he had suffered no injury from the authorization form contained superfluous material. Therefore, he had no standing to sue, according to a recent 9th Circuit ruling. “We essentially challenged the entire case,” she said.

The federal judge agreed and tossed out the case. So the plaintiffs refiled in state court, where they suffered the same fate. The Court of Appeal affirmed that second summary judgment, and the state Supreme Court denied review.

“It was really fun, and … it was really important,” she said about the case. “Our client felt that we helped shape the law.”

In a very different area, Rodriguez and her team recently provided some entertainment industry clients with guidelines on how best to oppose proposed legislation that would have banned exclusivity provisions in film and TV performers’ contracts. She offered some ideas toward compromise and, if those failed, said the studios could argue the bill was preempted by the National Labor Relations Act.

“It got everybody back to the table and a compromise was reached,” she said. The legislator withdrew his bill in August.

— Don DeBenedictis