The Federal/State Wage Hour Conundrum:

This program will explore the strategic decisions of what claims to assert, the geographic scope of the class, and the choice of forum.

The program will contrast state and federal wage hour claims in several areas, including:

• Travel time
• Tip pooling
• Meal and rest breaks
• Remedies
• Gap time/regular rate calculations
• Defense response to hybrid FLSA and state claims
• Enforceability of class action waivers in arbitration agreements

Laura L. Ho is a partner with Goldstein, Demchak, Baller, Borgen & Dardarian in Oakland, CA. The firm represents plaintiffs throughout the country in class and collective actions, including employment discrimination, wage and hour, disability access, and attorneys’ fees litigation. Most recently, Ms. Ho was trial counsel in Chau v. Starbucks, winning a judgment of over $106 million and an injunction for employees challenging Starbucks’ tip pooling policy in California.

Shannon Liss-Riordan is a plaintiff-side employment attorney who practices in Boston at Pyle, Rome, Lichten, Ehrenberg & Liss-Riordan, P.C.  She is a national expert on class action litigation involving failure to pay wages, overtime, gratuities, and misclassification of employees as independent contractors. Over the last seven years, Ms. Liss-Riordan has represented thousands of servers in dozens of tips-related lawsuits against restaurants, hotels, and other establishments. She has obtained nearly twenty court-approved class action settlements for waitstaff; she has won many tips cases on summary judgment;, and she has won three jury verdicts for tipped employees against the Hilltop Steak House (2006), Federalist restaurant (2007), and American Airlines (2008).  Ms. Liss-Riordan also represents cleaning workers in a number of cases alleging deceptive business practices and misclassification by national cleaning franchise companies. She is an active plaintiffs’ counsel in national litigation against FedEx Ground for misclassifying delivery drivers as independent contractors.

Michael Loeb is a full-time San Francisco-based employment law mediator/arbitrator with JAMS.  He practiced exclusively in the areas of employment and labor law for 31 years and was the chair of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enerson’s Labor and Employment Department until 2002.  Mr. Loeb has mediated or arbitrated virtually every type of employment dispute, including more than 50 wage and hour class actions under the FLSA State or California law.  He is a frequent speaker on mediating and litigating wage and hour class actions and has made many presentations on these subjects to the State Bar of California Labor and Employment Law Section, Practicing Law Institute (PLI), Bridgeport Continuing Education, the California Employment Lawyers Associations (CELA), and law firms.

Daniel L. Thieme is a shareholder in the Seattle office of Littler Mendelson, P.C., the country’s largest employment law firm. He represents employers in class and collective wage and hour lawsuits in state and federal court. He is the author of the Washington State chapter of the BNA/ABA treatise, Wage and Hour Laws: A State-By-State Survey, and a contributing author to the Lexis/Nexis publications Littler Mendelson on Employment Law Class Actions, the National Employer, and the Washington Employer.  He is designated a "Super Lawyer" by Washington Law & Politics magazine.

$85 Section of Labor and Employment Law Members
$125 ABA Members
$150 General Public
$60 Each additional registrant using the same phone line
$85 Government Discount
$75 Young Lawyers Division Members

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