Empoyment Law Case Results
Settlement
$3 Million
Employment
Truck Drivers v. Agricultural Company. $3,000,000 class action settlement agreement that included payments to truck drivers and forgiveness of their debt. Our firm was lead co-counsel in a class action and PAGA claim for truck drivers of an agricultural company engaging in wage theft. The drivers did not receive pay as they waited substantial amounts of time to load and unload their trucks. Truck drivers who left the company were unlawfully charged for training expenses to discourage them from leaving. The settlement resulted in hundreds of hard-working truck drivers being better compensated for their work going back over five years, and forgiveness of the unlawful training charges.
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Settlement
$1.5 Million
Discrimination ClaimsEmploymentRetaliation ClaimsWrongful Termination
Judgment in excess of $1.5 million (with attorneys’ fees). Employees v. Indian Restaurant: Four employees of a restaurant were wrongfully terminated and threatened with deportation after they complained about repeated wage and hour violations by the employer. The employees worked more than 60 hours per week and were frequently shorted on their already meager “salaries”. The employer repeatedly promised to make up the backpay in the future and, after employees became persistent in their complaints about the unpaid wages and long hours, the owners of the restaurant threatened to call immigration authorities and have the employees deported. We prevailed at trial, persisted through six bankruptcies, multiple fraudulent liens on assets, and eventually seized three investment properties belonging to the employers.
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Combined Settlement
$1.1 Million
Employment
Defendant sexually harassed our clients.
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Settlement
$1.1 Million
Employment
Our client was able to prove, after a full trial, that defendants placed about $1,100,000 in fraudulent liens to avoid collection on an earlier $800,000 plus judgment in favor of our client. The judge issued a tentative decision in the fraudulent transfer action indicating that he intended to extend the original $800,000 plus judgment against all persons involved in the fraudulent transfers, and would award significant emotional distress and punitive damages, resulting in a judgment well in excess of the $1.1 million in fraudulent transfers. The case settled before judgment was entered.
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Settlement
$600 Thousand
Employment
Our clients were pharmacist who were misclassified as salaried employees and not paid their overtime and were not provided their meal or rest breaks. This type of case requires significant document analysis, and we reviewed a voluminous number of documents to confirm what was happening to our clients.
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Settlement
$550 Thousand
Employment
Our clients worked at a restaurant that did not pay them all of their wages and did not make meal/rest breaks available. This case involved over a dozen plaintiffs at various jobs at the restaurant, all of whom were wronged. Defendants repeatedly denied responsibility until right before trial, and we won multiple legal battles to achieve justice.
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Settlement
$500 Thousand
EmploymentWrongful Termination
Two female workers were sexually harassed at a restaurant by their chef who tried to sleep with them and touched them inappropriately. When the two females complained, they were ignored. One client quit and the other was terminated in retaliation.
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Judgment
$1.5 million
Employment
Martin Zurada led a case for two disadvantaged and frequently houseless immigrants who were cheated and abused by an unscrupulous motel owner in Oakland. Both were cheated out of their wages for the hard work they had been putting in at the motel. Worse yet, our female client was repeatedly sexually harassed and assaulted by the motel owner. The motel owner knew that our female client was in need of the income from her motel job to obtain stable housing and regain custody of her children. He never imagined that these powerless people would fight back or find a law firm that would believe in them and would fight for their rights. We fought numerous motions and other delay tactics to get to trial. The highest offer we ever got was “$5,000” for both of our clients. We were told that our clients had a “nuisance” lawsuit that was worth nothing. We couldn’t wait for years for a jury trial in Alameda County, so we agreed to bring the case before a judge to speed up the wheels of justice. After a five-day trial led by Martin Zurada, we obtained a judgment for over $800,000 for our clients, and then we augmented it with an award of over $750,000 in attorney’s fees and costs. We then aggressively pursued collection, and, within six months of the trial, we forced the sale of the motel where all of the wrongdoing happened which resulted in our clients and our firm obtaining full money justice.
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Full Policy Limit Settlement
$1 Million
Employment
Our clients were females working for a non-profit that permitted unlawful behavior towards them and ignored repeated complaints.
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