Staying Ahead of Rapidly Evolving Employment Issues

A proven track record of successfully providing solution-oriented, innovative, and strategic advice on complex, novel and sensitive mandates involving employment discrimination class actions, employee testing, sexual harassment, and whistleblower retaliation.

Our latest employment wins and representations for our clients

Represented General Atomics in a precedent-setting employment case

The Paul Hastings team, led by Zach Hutton, Paul Cane, and Anna Skaggs, won an appeal for General Atomics in a precedent-setting employment case involving California wage and hour law. The plaintiff asserted class action and representative action claims alleging that her employer, General Atomics, violated California’s pay stub law, Labor Code section 226, by depicting overtime premiums separately from base pay on employees’ wage statements. The team convinced the court of appeal to issue a writ ordering the trial court to grant summary judgment for General Atomics prior to trial. The court of appeal’s published decision confirmed the lawfulness of a common pay stub format utilized by employers across the state.

This case is precedent-setting because it affirmed California law which require wage statements to show "all applicable hourly rates in effect during the pay period and the corresponding number of hours worked at each hourly rate by the employee," and affirmed that General Atomic did that, despite combining non-overtime and overtime hours and didn’t break the law, meaning that other companies can format their statements in various ways like our client did.

General Atomics v. the Superior Court of San Diego County et al., case number D078211

Representing long-term client Google in employment matters

Perhaps now most notably in its high profile NLRB matter that started trial on August 23, 2021. We are defending Google against accusations that our client violated the NLRA by terminating and/or disciplining four employees who searched for and accessed confidential, competitively-sensitive contracts with governmental agencies (and related materials) and then broadcasted them across the company, and three employees who then usurped a corporate security tool to push a personal message to the computers of employees worldwide in effort to support the other four. All of the employees contend they were engaged in protected concerted activity under the NLRA.

The case has the potential to shape federal labor law going forward with regard to the protections workers will have when they engage in employee activism on topics that are not directly connected to their terms and conditions of employment.

In Doe v. Google Catalyst Litigation, we defeated plaintiffs’ attempt to collect $1.3M in catalyst attorneys’ fees on legal claims the Court previously dismissed on federal preemption grounds. Plaintiffs initially appealed that loss, but abandoned the appeal in May 2021, on the eve of the deadline for their opening brief.

  • Labor & Employment - Law Firm of the Year

    Chambers USA, 2021

  • Ranked for Labor and Employment Disputes and Workplace and Employment Counseling

    The Legal 500, 2021

An elite employment law team

Our lawyers provide practical, business-minded counsel on all types of employment law matters, including wage and hour issues, EEOC matters, restrictive covenants, employee mobility and trade secrets, labor management issues, employee benefits, ERISA litigation, and international employment issues.

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