Dipanwita Deb Amar 

Dipanwita Deb Amar is an employer-side partner in the labor and employment practice group at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP. She joined in 2012 when Arnold & Porter acquired her then-firm, Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin.

"I even got to keep my same office," Amar said. "It's turned out to be the perfect platform for me here. I have four children and a husband who is also a partner at Arnold & Porter, and it can be hard to find a place that goes out of its way to help me make it all work out. I am blessed."

She is a member of the board of trustees for UC Law San Francisco, where she obtained her JD cum laude. She then clerked for the late U.S. District Judge Robert E. Coyle of Fresno.

"It was an incredibly valuable experience for someone who wanted to be a litigator," Amar said. "Not only did I get to see lawyers of all types, styles and capabilities, I learned to process and distill information quickly. My job was to write bench memos for every matter and then turn them into orders after hearings."

In her current work, Amar successfully pushed back against efforts by the plaintiff bar to file multiple Private Attorneys General Act complaints on identical facts in different jurisdictions. She persuaded a state appellate panel to weigh in on the practice in an opinion of first impression for client Beverages & More, Inc.

BevMo retained Amar to defend it in a PAGA case over employees' claims regarding off-the-clock work, meal and rest periods, suitable seating and failure to provide safety devices. After the litigation had been in progress for about a year, plaintiff lawyers filed four copycat suits. Amar obtained a stay of the first case, then fought off motions by the new plaintiffs to intervene in the first case or to coordinate the cases when the plaintiffs sought a writ of mandate from the Court of Appeal. Shaw v. Superior Court, A163263 (1st DCA, op. filed May 3, 2022).

The appellate panel ruled for BevMo, holding that trial courts have discretion to apply the doctrine of exclusive concurrent jurisdiction to stay PAGA actions that arise from the same facts and theories.

"The PAGA law was not particularly well thought through by the Legislature. Plaintiff lawyers view it as a mini class action, but without the procedural constraints," Amar said. "The Shaw decision showed that courts have the power to manage their cases, even in PAGA matters."

--John Roemer