Fierro v. Landry’s Rest. Inc., 23 Cal. App. 5th 325 (2018)

Jorge Fierro filed this class action, claiming that he and the other members of the putative class were misclassified as exempt employees and that, in fact, they were non-exempt, non-managerial employees who are owed unpaid overtime wages and penalties. Landry’s responded by filing a demurrer, claiming that the claims are barred by the applicable statutes of limitation. Although Landry’s conceded that the filing of an earlier class action for these claims tolled the statute of limitations applicable to Fierro’s individual claims, it maintained that the statute was not tolled for the class claims Fierro asserted. Landry’s also contended that because the earlier class action was dismissed for failure to bring the action to trial within five years, the class claims could not be resurrected in the new action filed by Fierro. The trial court sustained the demurrer to the class claims due to the earlier dismissal based upon the five-year rule. The Court of Appeal reversed, holding that Landry’s had not established that the earlier class action was in fact dismissed based upon the five-year rule and, in any event, that judgment was not final since an appeal is still pending. The Court further held that application of the American Pipe tolling doctrine saved the class claims from dismissal under California law. Compare China Agritech, Inc. v. Resh, 584 U.S. ___, 138 S. Ct. 1800 (2018) (successive class action may not be filed under federal law after the original statute of limitations period has expired); see also Shine v. Williams-Sonoma, Inc., 23 Cal. App. 5th 1070 (2018) (successive class action was barred by settlement from previous class action asserted against same defendants and in which lead plaintiff participated).

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Photo of Tony Oncidi Tony Oncidi

Anthony J. Oncidi is the Co-Chair Emeritus of the Labor & Employment Law Department and heads the West Coast Labor & Employment group in the firm’s Los Angeles office.

Tony represents employers and management in all aspects of labor relations and employment law…

Anthony J. Oncidi is the Co-Chair Emeritus of the Labor & Employment Law Department and heads the West Coast Labor & Employment group in the firm’s Los Angeles office.

Tony represents employers and management in all aspects of labor relations and employment law, including litigation and preventive counseling, wage and hour matters, including class actions, wrongful termination, employee discipline, Title VII and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, executive employment contract disputes, sexual harassment training and investigations, workplace violence, drug testing and privacy issues, Sarbanes-Oxley claims and employee raiding and trade secret protection. A substantial portion of Tony’s practice involves the defense of employers in large class actions, employment discrimination, harassment and wrongful termination litigation in state and federal court as well as arbitration proceedings, including FINRA matters.

Tony is recognized as a leading lawyer by such highly respected publications and organizations as the Los Angeles Daily JournalThe Hollywood Reporter, and Chambers USA, which gives him the highest possible rating (“Band 1”) for Labor & Employment.  According to Chambers USA, clients say Tony is “brilliant at what he does… He is even keeled, has a high emotional IQ, is a great legal writer and orator, and never gives up.” Other clients report:  “Tony has an outstanding reputation” and he is “smart, cost effective and appropriately aggressive.” Tony is hailed as “outstanding,” particularly for his “ability to merge top-shelf lawyerly advice with pragmatic business acumen.” He is highly respected in the industry, with other commentators lauding him as a “phenomenal strategist” and “one of the top employment litigators in the country.”

“Tony is the author of the treatise titled Employment Discrimination Depositions (Juris Pub’g 2020; www.jurispub.com), co-author of Proskauer on Privacy (PLI 2020), and, since 1990, has been a regular columnist for the official publication of the Labor and Employment Law Section of the State Bar of California and the Los Angeles Daily Journal.

Tony has been a featured guest on Fox 11 News and CBS News in Los Angeles. He has been interviewed and quoted by leading national media outlets such as The National Law JournalBloomberg News, The New York Times, and Newsweek and Time magazines. Tony is a frequent speaker on employment law topics for large and small groups of employers and their counsel, including the Society for Human Resource Management (“SHRM”), PIHRA, the National CLE Conference, National Business Institute, the Employment Round Table of Southern California (Board Member), the Council on Education in Management, the Institute for Corporate Counsel, the State Bar of California, the California Continuing Education of the Bar Program and the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills Bar Associations. He has testified as an expert witness regarding wage and hour issues as well as the California Fair Employment and Housing Act and has served as a faculty member of the National Employment Law Institute. He has served as an arbitrator in an employment discrimination matter.

Tony is an appointed Hearing Examiner for the Los Angeles Police Commission Board of Rights and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law and a guest lecturer at USC Law School and a guest lecturer at UCLA Law School.