PRACTICE AREAS
PRACTICE AREAS
PRACTICE AREAS
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Below is our list of practice areas.
Meal and Rest Break Cases (California, Washington, Colorado)
​In California and Washington, employers must, by law, provide an off-duty 30-minute meal period to employees on or before the fifth and tenth hours of work. In California, if an employer fails to provide the off-duty meal period, then the employer must pay the employee premium pay amounting to one hour of pay per day at the employee’s regular rate of pay. In Washington, if the meal break is not provided, then employers are obligated to pay for the time associated with those breaks in addition to the employees’ working time. Employers in both states must additionally provide 10-minute paid rest periods for every 4 hours of work.
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In California, rest breaks must also be completely duty-free, and when rest breaks are not provided, premium pay is due in the same amount as for missed meal periods. Hotel workers, restaurant employees, nurses, respiratory therapists, and others must be paid for all of their meal and rest break time when such breaks are not provided in California and Washington. Our firm has amassed a significant amount of experience handling meal and rest period class and PAGA representative unpaid-wage actions on behalf of California and Washington employees – indeed, we have brought a substantial number of meal and rest period class actions in Washington and California that have resulted in substantial recoveries for the class, and see these types of cases as a growth area for at least the next few years.
Employment Anti Trust, No Poach, and Wage Fixing Class Actions
Our firm represents employees and independent contractors who have lost wages or compensation as a result of employers’ antitrust conspiracies. This includes, for instance, anti-poach and non-solicitation agreements between employers (i.e., agreements between competitors to not recruit or poach each other’s employees) and wage-fixing agreements (i.e., agreements between competitors to pre-determine or fix the wage rates to be paid for certain job positions or service contracts). In such antitrust cases, our firm seeks to recover the difference between the wages that employees were paid and what they would have been paid in a competitive market, in the absence of the rival companies’ unlawful agreements, plus treble (triple) damages as allowed by antitrust laws.
Unrestricted competition and the free market are the foundations of the American economic system, and antitrust laws protect competition for labor just as they protect competition for goods and services. As the Federal Trade Commission has recognized, antitrust laws “protect the freedom of working people to choose the best job for them and their families. Just as vibrant competition for goods and services benefits consumers, competition among employers benefits workers through better wages, benefits, and other terms and conditions for working people. Business practices may violate the antitrust laws when they harm the competitive process, especially if they deprive labor markets of independent centers of decision making or they create or abuse employers’ monopsony power. By interfering with free and fair competition for workers, such practices can lead to fewer job opportunities, lower wages, and worse working conditions.” Available at: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/p251201antitrustguidelinesbusinessactivitiesaffectingworkers2025.pdf
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Our firm was co-counsel in a large class action antitrust case against several transportation companies that alleged the rival companies conspired to restrain competition by refusing to hire truck drivers who were under contract with another rival company. The parties settled the class antitrust claims with all defendants after years of litigation. Our firm also represented fast food workers in five separate antitrust cases against fast food franchises, where our clients alleged that the applicable
franchise agreements contained mutual no-hire and no-solicit provisions that prohibited all franchisees from employing, seeking to employ, or recruiting one another’s employees. After our firm defeated multiple motions to dismiss the antitrust claims, we successfully resolved all of our clients’ individual claims. Our firm was also referral counsel in the Disney/Pixar antitrust class action, which alleged those companies engaged in no-poach agreements and wage-fixing as to animation and visual effects workers. The Disney/Pixar class action resulted in multiple settlements totaling over $168 million. Finally, our firm currently represents a FEMA services subcontractor in a class action antitrust case that alleges he and other FEMA services subcontractors and/or employees’ wages were suppressed due to illegal no-poach and wage-fixing agreements between the company with a prime contract with FEMA and several of its FEMA services contractor companies.
If you believe that your wages or employment mobility has been suppressed by formal or informal no-poach, non-solicitation, or wage-fixing agreements between rival companies, please reach out to our firm for a free and confidential intake.
Multi-Plaintiff Racial and Sexual Harassment and Retaliation Cases (nationwide)
Our firm prioritizes the representation of victims of workplace racial and sexual harassment. Sexual harassment and racial harassment are forms of sex and race discrimination that violate state and federal law. Unwanted sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance, and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment. Sexual harassment can occur in a variety of circumstances, including but not limited to the following: the harasser can be the victim’s supervisor, an agent of the employer, a supervisor in another area, a co-worker, or a non-employee; the victim as well as the harasser may be a man or a woman; the victim does not have to be the opposite sex; the victim does not have to be the person harassed but could be anyone affected by the offensive conduct; sexual harassment may occur without any economic injury to or discharge of the victim; the harasser’s conduct must be unwelcome. Similarly, racial harassment occurs when the work environment is permeated with offensive racial slurs, cartoons, ridicule, comments or jokes. Our firm has and continues to represent dozens of victims of sexual and racial harassment each year, not only in California and Washington, but also in a number of other states where we work with, and provide mentorship to, highly-qualified local counsel attorneys (such as Oregon, Nevada, Texas, and Michigan).
In nearly 30 years of practice, Craig Ackermann and our firm have represented over 1,500 victims of sexual and racial harassment in cases around the country. We have found that sexual and racial harassment tends to occur more frequently in certain industries, including the restaurant industry, manufacturing facilities, medical facilities, hotels, and construction sites. We look for cases where there is substantial corroboration of pervasive sexual or racial harassment, where documented complaints were made to management, and where the harassment persisted following the complaints. Our multi-plaintiff sexual and racial harassment practice continues to grow, as it is a core value of our firm to pursue these cases. In addition, we vigorously pursue legal action when clients and potential clients are subjected to
retaliation for raising complaints about illegal harassment, discrimination, and/or when they are retaliated against for bringing forward wage and hour complaints.
Unpaid Overtime and Misclassification Class Actions / PAGA (California)
In California, employers must properly classify workers as employees and pay them on a W-2 basis, and cannot misclassify workers as independent contractors to avoid having to comply with the Labor Code. Under PAGA, substantial penalties can be sought against companies that misclassify workers and contractors. In addition, employers in California must pay daily overtime to their employees after 8 hours of work at a rate of 1.5 times the employee’s regular rate of pay. Under both California and federal law, employers must pay weekly overtime for all hours worked by employees over 40 hours per week.
Under federal law, employees who have not been paid overtime can recover their unpaid overtime pay, as well as liquidated (double) damages and attorneys’ fees. Under California state law, employees who have not been paid overtime can also bring suit to recover their unpaid overtime pay, plus interest and attorneys’ fees incurred, as well as derivative penalties. Many overtime class action and PAGA cases arise from the misclassification of workers as “exempt” from overtime when, in fact, they are “non-exempt,” and, thus, they are entitled to overtime pay. Our firm has successfully prosecuted such cases in the trucking industry and in various manufacturing contexts under the Fair Labor Standards Act and pursuant to the California Labor Code.
Executive Breach of Contract / Stock Option & Equity Litigation and Severance Negotiations
Our firm and Craig Ackermann in particular have developed specialized expertise representing C-Suite executives and other high level managerial employees in wrongful termination and severance negotiations, as well as in high dollar breach of contract disputes involving stock, equity, stock options, and RSUs. These are often seven-figure or even eight-figure cases where large publicly traded companies and lots of shares are involved.
In the mid-2000s, we represented 150 employees of Butterfields in a breach of contract action against eBay when eBay sold Butterfields and cancelled their unvested stock options. In the period from 2015 to 2025, we successfully represented a private equity executive in a multiple seven figure breach of employment contract / wrongful termination dispute where the employer attempted to claw-back equity held by the executive in several of its portfolio companies in an effort to thwart the payment of a significant profit participation / bonus clause in his employment contract. We also then successfully represented a C-Suite executive of a major real estate company in a wrongful termination and breach of contract action seeking millions of dollars in unpaid profit participation. Both of those matters were heavily litigated with favorable results.
In that same time frame, we also represented a female executive of a tech company who claimed disability discrimination when her stock options stopped vesting during an extended disability leave of absence. Earlier in his career, Craig Ackermann was also involved in the litigation of several major breach of cases (then on the defense side) alleging accelerated vesting of stock options following a major telecommunications merger where the issue was whether or not the executives’ salary or duties were significantly decreased post-merger. which was the trigger for acceleration of vesting. We also assisted a female tech executive in a case involving allegations of sex discrimination in compensation related to the issuance and granting of her options, equity and RSUs.
Finally, and often, we have represented C-Suite employees, including CEOs, CTOs, and CMOs of several major tech companies, in connection with negotiating favorable terms in their employment contracts, protecting their equity positions, and in connection with high-dollar severance negotiations, often involving golden parachute clauses, most favored nation clauses and/or efforts to move or change their termination dates to allow additional unvested stock options or RSUs.
On numerous occasions, Craig Ackermann has even been consulted by other employment lawyers handling their own cases with stock-related issues for his unique expertise in understanding how equity, RSUs and stock options operate, and to assist them in evaluating the strength of these sorts of types of claims on behalf of separating or discharged executives of major companies.
It is rare for an employment law firm to have expertise in stock, equity and stock option litigation, but we have a lot of it. We welcome the opportunity to work on more of these matters in the years to come.