Qiaojing Ella Zheng 

Qiaojing Ella Zheng is the Managing Partner of Sanford Heisler Sharp’s Palo Alto and San Francisco offices and Chair of the firm’s Asian American Litigation and Finance Practice group.

She said much of her work involves employment law cases growing out of the region’s multicultural work environment.

“The Bay Area has such diversity, but few attorneys have the language and cultural skills to represent people with backgrounds like mine,” Zheng said. “Having my own brain is very beneficial.”

Zheng’s skills in cross-cultural communication and understanding have made her a highly sought-after attorney for multinational and multi-jurisdictional disputes, and she is widely recognized as the go-to plaintiff’s litigator for the Asian American communities across the U.S.

She represents employees across the economic spectrum in individual and class actions involving wage and hour violations, discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender, race/national origin, age, sexual orientation and disability, retaliation and wrongful termination claims. She also represents executive and managerial personnel in both public litigation and privately negotiated settlements. In addition, Zheng represents whistleblowers in qui tam lawsuits under the U.S. False Claims Act and works on cases involving various governmental whistleblower programs.

From 2018 to 2023, Zheng represented a former chief nursing officer at Aurora Behavioral Healthcare-Santa Rosa. The case alleged that understaffing and related issues caused pervasive OSHA violations at the hospital operated by Signature Healthcare Services. The plaintiff also sought Labor Code penalties on behalf of the State of California for unlawful working conditions experienced by nurses and other staff using the California Private Attorneys General Act. Teresa Brook v. Aurora Behavioral Healthcare-Santa Rosa, LLC et al., SCV-261926 (Sonoma County Sup. Ct., filed Feb. 2, 2018).

A settlement on the individual claims was reached in 2020. In August 2021, the court approved a $2.85 million PAGA settlement — with $2 million to the State of California and $682,250 to hospital staff. The final settlement included robust programmatic measures to improve working conditions for front-line staff caring for acute patients. Zheng said this was a landmark settlement under the act because it was “the first to focus on hospital occupational health and safety.”

This year, Zheng is lead counsel in a class action and PAGA case on behalf of delivery drivers who allege that grocery supplier, Weee! Inc., had systematically violated their rights under the California Labor Code.

The alleged violations accuse the company of making unlawful deductions from drivers’ tips, failing to provide drivers with adequate meal periods and failing to pay for work performed during unpaid meal breaks, misclassifying a large group of drivers as independent contractors, and ignoring numerous laws and regulations designed to protect employees’ health and safety. Yi Song and Xiangyang Ji v. Weee! Logistics Inc., & Wee! Inc., 23CV029846 (Alameda County Sup. Ct., filed March 23, 2023).

The suit seeks civil penalties for Labor Code violations, PAGA penalties on behalf of the state, lost wages and other legal costs.

—Devon Belcher