Dustin L. Collier 

Dustin L. Collier founded his plaintiff-side employment boutique, Collier Law Firm, five years ago and has so far achieved more than $70 million in verdicts, judgments and settlements. Earlier, he studied labor and employment law at UC Berkeley School of Law and worked as a law clerk at the alternate defender’s office in Contra Costa County.

“I wanted to be a public defender, but nobody was hiring, so I shifted my track,” Collier said. “I wanted to represent the little guy against the big guy. That appeals to me, and I’ve been blessed with a skill set to help the powerless.”

Last year, Collier won $34.5 million for a school custodian injured on the job. Collier caught the school district’s insurer deliberately misrepresenting the extent of the injury in an effort to lowball a workers comp claim; the jury slapped the insurer with hefty punitive damages for conspiring to discriminate against a disabled worker. The defendant is challenging the verdict at the 6th District Court of Appeal. Ruvalcaba v. Santa Cruz City Schools and Keenan & Associates et al., 19CV00488 (S. Cruz Co. Super. Ct., filed Feb. 13, 2019).

In one lengthy and complex whistleblower case, Collier represented 231 California State University employees in a PAGA action over alleged Occupational Safety and Health Administration violations. The outcome included a $387,000 damages award and more than $7.8 million in attorney fees. Both were affirmed on appeal — along with a published opinion establishing that public employees have the right to pursue PAGA claims. Sargent v. Board of Trustees of the California State University et al., A153072, A154926 (1st DCA, op. filed March 5, 2021).

The case didn’t end there. “As part of the remedies, the court ordered that our lead plaintiff, Mr. Sargent, be reinstated with back pay, benefits and seniority, and CSU defaulted on every aspect of that order,” Collier said.

He took the matter back to the judge in a bench trial on contempt of judgment claims. That led to a further $558,000 award for back pay and interest plus a new claim for tax neutralization, based on the extra levy the plaintiff had to pay for the lump sum he received.

“Tax neutralization or tax offset has been a concept in federal law but was new in California in 2019, and we successfully argued that it applied retroactively,” Collier said.

He collected an additional half-million dollar fee award for the contempt proceedings. “They ended up doing what they were ordered to do in the first place,” Collier said. “It took nine years, and our fees reflected that.”

—John Roemer