Practice Areas Emilio Law Group represents small to medium-sized business clients throughout Southern California - including Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties. While our firm was built on employment cases - including wage and overtime, wrongful termination and discrimination lawsuits - we have ended up representing so many more businesses in general business lawsuits of every type, that we can no longer consider ourselves as exclusively an employment law firm. Some of the most common lawsuits include the following: WRONGFUL TERMINATION Even the best employment practices cannot totally avoid these lawsuits. California Labor Code section 2922 provides for "at-will" employment, which means that you can legally terminate an employee without giving a reason. There are exceptions. An employee with an employment contract may only be terminated with good cause. Also, you cannot terminate for a "bad" reason, including terminating based on race, age (over 40), gender, sexual orientation, public policy violations, etc, etc, etc. You get the point. The exceptions swallow the rule, so before terminating an employee you need to speak to an employment attorney or qualified HR person. Because these cases are so potentially devasting, you must consider arbitration agreements for all employees, to avoid the risk of out-of-control jury verdicts. DISCRIMINATION AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT Just like Wrongful Termination, these cases provide for punitive damages and represent significant risk for employers. In addition, these cases also provide for attorney fees, so even if you only lose a little, the attorney fees award against you can be significant, e.g., more than $100,000. So, it's very important, again, to have arbitration agreements in place. Further, strong company policies should be in place, and regular training for supervisors to insure that all personnel know the importance and penalties for violation of state and federal discrimination and harassment laws. In addition, owners of small companies must be diligent in dealing with employees of the opposite sex. Playful banter, sexual "joking around" or suggestive cartoons are just a few of the many ways that companies and their owners can get into serious trouble. Good employment practices, like taking care not to have meetings alone behind closed doors, or going to lunch with someone alone without others present, must be strictly followed. OVERTIME These cases are very complicated and care must be taken that labor laws are followed. The first issue is to know whether your employees are exempt or non-exempt. If you don't know the difference, you must immediately contact an employment attorney to insure that you understand the difference and that you comply with all exemption requirements. For your non-exempt hourly employees, be sure that you maintain accurate time cards/sheets of hours worked and meal breaks taken and that they are paid through a payroll system with statutory tax withholding. If you pay people by some other method, e.g., piece work, per day, salary, commissions, etc., you must review these practices with an attorney. If an employee works any overtime (over 8 hours in a day or over 40 hours in a week) and is paid by one of these other methods (other than purely hourly rate), the overtime calculations become so complicated that it is certain that you are probably paying incorrectly and are subject to stiff penalties. Even if you only owe a small amount of overtime, you are also subject to attorney fees that can be substantial. If you are paying any person as a "1099" independent contractor, you must immediately contact an employment attorney to be certain that you have not misclassified these people. The penalties for misclassifying people as independent contractors are the most severe of any in the Labor Code. If you are found to have "wilfully" misclassified them, you are subject to monetary penalties of $5,000 to $25,000 PER VIOLATION. This is new law and we are not yet certain whether this means that those penalties apply to each payroll period. This could be a company buster. Another important point concerning wage and overtime cases is the potential for class action lawsuits. These are cases where one of your employees hires an attorney to sue you for himself and ALL other employees who ever worked for you over the past 4 years. These can be especially devasting because not only are you potentially subject to substantial verdicts of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars (even with small employers), the attorneys in these cases will demand from the court that you provide them the names, addresses and telephone numbers of every employee, current and former, and they will then contact all your employees to look for assistance in fighting the case against you. This very disruptive to your business as you are going to get many inquiries of employees as well as "ring leaders" who will cause discontent throughout your company. The good news is that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on a case (AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion) that allows you to include a class action "waiver" in your arbitration agreement that now prevents those class action cases. But you simply must employ these agreements at your company immediately. Our employment arbitration agreement already includes this class action waiver and you can download the agreement for free on our website under the Resources section. COLLECTION ACTIONS AND BREACH OF CONTRACT We handle many of these cases, and our approach here is to first determine if money is actually owned and how much. After that, we really need to get these cases settled before spending any substantial money in defense. Our Early Settlement program has been very successful in getting these cases resolved quickly - in many cases before we actually file an Answer to the Complaint. The key here is to start early so we don't run out of time before the Answer is due. The goal with these cases is to try to lower the amount owed and then get the best terms for repayment. Most creditors really didn't want to hire an attorney for this in the first place and are usually more than eager to try to get these cases resolved. This is true of vendor purchases, bank loans and even credit card balances. AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES CLAIMS (ADA) (Retail Stores) These cases have run amok with the same Plaintiffs filing hundreds of cases with the same attorneys. These professional plaintiffs drive by every shopping center to first look for handicap parking violations at retail, restaurant, gas stations, and other public establishments and then go in to look for violations in restrooms (mirrors too high, missing hand rails on toilets, narrow doorways, etc). Once again, these cases must be settled quickly and our Early Settlement program is the best solution. Plaintiff attorneys who file these lawsuits are looking for quick money and it is vitally important to settle early because the attorney fees for these cases will quickly exceed the penalties. The problem with these cases is that even the most minor of violations creates liability and these cases must be settled quickly because taking the case to trial is a certain loser. In addition to helping you getting these cases settled, our staff will provide you with referrals to qualified inspectors who will make certain that you come into compliance. The real risk with these cases is that because lawsuits are in the public record, other attorneys who do these cases watch for filed cases and then will send their own clients to go to those establishments to file their own lawsuit and now you have two or more independent cases to deal with. So, the most important point is that once you are sued, you must get into compliance immediately. We believe that the best method to protect clients from lawsuits is to take proactive measures before minor issues become lawsuits and so at your initial consultation we discuss not only the lawsuit of today, but also the lawsuit you might expect next year. We will recommend and provide a no-cost employment arbitration agreement and we recommend and will help you implement arbitration agreements for your business clients as well. Regardless of the matter, the Emilio Law Group does not compromise in its efforts to obtain favorable results. For more information regarding our practice areas, please tour our website; feel free to contact our office at 714-379-6239. For your convenience, we also speak Spanish.

Emilio Law Group, apc, Corporate Office, 12832 Valley View St., Suite 106, Garden Grove, CA 92845, (714) 379-6239, Fax (714) 379-5444, Disclaimer