News

Hunter Pyle to speak at Bridgeport’s 2020 PAGA Program

Hunter will be speaking on two PAGA panels in February and March 2020.

Katie Fiester will be speaking today on the following panel hosted by the California Employment Lawyers Association (CELA):

A to Z of Litigating Individual Plaintiff Wage Cases

Speakers Katie Fiester (Hunter Pyle Law), Un Kei Wu (Liberation Law Group) and Estella Cisneros (California Rural Legal Assistance) will cover forum selection, arbitration clauses and recent developments in the law; the pros and cons of Labor Commissioner, arbitration and court; pleadings and discovery; adjudication of wage claim at trial, Berman hearing and arbitration; and appeals.  Marco A. Palau (Advocates for Worker Rights LLP) will moderate.

On October 1, 2019, Hunter will present and supervise at the Workers’ Rights Disability Law Clinic in Berkeley, California.  The topic of his presentation will be “State and Federal Employment Protections for Workers with Disabilities.”

The Workers’ Rights Disability Law Clinic provides free legal advice to low-income people with disabilities.  It is a project of Legal Aid at Work, and also helps to train Berkeley Law students who are interested in employment law.

This is the third year that Hunter has presented on this topic at the Clinic, and he is looking forward to meeting this year’s group of volunteers.

On September 3, 2019, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers approved a $5.4 million settlement in the case of Castro v. ABM, case no. 4:17-cv-03026-YGR.  Our clients in this case were two janitors who had to use their cell phones for work-related purposes such as clocking in and out and calling their supervisors.  After Judge Gonzalez Rogers certified the case as a class action, we wound up representing over 30,000 janitors throughout California.

The case was hotly contested over the course of many years, and we are grateful to our heroic clients for being brave enough to pursue justice in the workplace.

Thanks too to our co-counsel at Feinberg, Jackson, Worthman and Wasow, LLP.  This was a team effort from start to finish, and we could not have done it without you!

Hunter Pyle will be giving three presentations to other lawyers regarding PAGA claims and class actions in the fall of 2019.

First, on September 25, 2019, Hunter will speak at a conference entitled Cutting-Edge Employment Law Issues 2019: The California Difference, to be held at the Practising Law Institute (“PLI”) in San Francisco.  PLI is a nonprofit learning organization dedicated to keeping attorneys and professionals at the forefront of knowledge and expertise, as well as preparing them to fulfill their pro bono responsibilities.  Hunter will be discussing cutting edge issues in PAGA litigation.

Next, on October 18, 2019, Hunter will speak about PAGA at Bridgeport’s 2019 Wage & Hour Conference, which will also be held in San Francisco.

Finally, on October 25, 2019, Hunter will be doing a 90 minute program on Litigating PAGA Claims.  That event will be recorded by Continuing Education of the Bar (CEB).  CEB offers continuing legal education courses to lawyers and publishing practice guides that are available to practitioners throughout California and beyond.

On May 17, 2019, Hunter Pyle spoke at and moderated a panel that was part of the California Employment Lawyers Association’s 15th Annual Wage and Hour Seminar in Pasadena, California.  The

panel’s title was “Your Best Defense is a Good Offense”, and its focus was on defeating the dirty tricks that defendants sometimes use in wage and hour class actions.  Hunter focused his remarks on reverse auctions, the practice whereby defendants try to undermine class actions by settling another case and then using that settlement to bar a case that is further along.  For more information, please feel free to email Hunter at hunter@hunterpylelaw.com.

On April 4, 2019, the Honorable D. Scott Daniels granted final approval to a class action settlement brought on behalf of a group of workers at the Valero Benicia Refinery.  The attorneys at Hunter Pyle Law represented those workers, who claimed that they were not paid for time spent commuting from the front gate of the refinery to their worksites.  They also were not paid for time spent putting on and taking off (also known as “donning and doffing”) their protective gear.  Checks should go out to the workers in approximately 30 days.

The attorneys at Hunter Pyle Law are proud to represent working men and women throughout California.  If you have questions about your rights on the job, please feel free to contact us for a free and confidential intake process.  We can be reached at (510) 444-4400 or inquire@hunterpylelaw.com.