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Tony Oncidi

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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 Journal, The 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 Journal, Bloomberg 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.

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Cortina v. North Am. Title Co., 2026 WL 1506576 (Cal. Ct. App. 2026)

In this 137-page opinion, which the Court of Appeal noted involves an even more “rare and beastly case” than Duran v. U.S. Bank Nat’l Ass’n, 59 Cal. 4th 1 (2014), the Court held that the trial court committed multiple prejudicial errors, including permitting a trial plan and format that…

Cocom v. ABM Aviation, Inc., 2026 WL 1793637 (9th Cir. 2026)

In this putative wage and hour class action, the district court denied the employer’s motion to compel arbitration after concluding it was procedurally and substantively unconscionable based on the analysis of Cook v. University of S. Cal., 102 Cal. App. 5th 312 (2024).  The Ninth Circuit, relying largely upon Ayala-Ventura…

Quinteros v. Harbor Distrib., LLC, 2026 WL 1693424 (Cal. Ct. App. 2026)

Here we go again. The lawyers representing the plaintiffs in this putative wage and hour class action were responsible for “evident misuse of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in an otherwise meritless pleading.”  The trial court ordered the attorneys to pay $5,000 in sanctions to the opposing party and $1,000 in sanctions to…

Brown v. Alaska Airlines, Inc., 2026 WL 1813213 (9th Cir. 2026)

Former Alaska Airlines flight attendants Marli Brown and Lacey Smith sued their former employer for religious discrimination under Title VII and state anti-discrimination laws. The airline allegedly terminated their employment following their posting comments on an internal intranet communications network in response to the company’s statement of support of the Equality Act…

J.O. v. Superior Court, 19 Cal. 5th 753 (2026)

Pursuant Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 170.6, a party or attorney may disqualify a judge from a matter simply by signing an affidavit or orally stating under oath that the judge is “prejudiced” against a party, attorney, or their respective interests. If the motion is timely and properly presented, the disqualification is automatic and…

Askins v. CRST Expedited, Inc., 120 Cal. App. 5th 1190 (2026)

Terry Askins applied online for a position with CRST, a trucking company.  During the application process, CRST provided Askins with a disclosure form and indicated that a background check would be performed on him. Both before and during his employment, CRST conducted background checks on him. Askins filed a putative class action…

Guild Mortg. Co. v. CrossCountry Mortg. LLC, 120 Cal. App. 5th 885 (2026)

The California Court of Appeal revived a host of tort claims asserted against a company that allegedly executed a plan to recruit a competitor’s employees, divert its customers, and appropriate its pipeline of active loan applications. Guild Mortgage alleged that over an 18-month period, CrossCountry Mortgage (CCM) induced and conspired with…

The California Court of Appeal has revived a host of tort claims against a company that allegedly executed a plan to recruit a competitor’s employees, divert its customers, and appropriate its pipeline of active loan applications. Guild Mortgage Co. v. CrossCountry Mortgage LLC, 2026 WL 1505950 (Cal. Ct. App. 2026).

Guild Mortgage alleged that over an 18-month period, CrossCountry Mortgage (CCM) induced and conspired…

DATELINE: California—where apparently $100 million verdicts are becoming so common that they barely qualify as news anymore.

As we have previously reported, California juries continue to hand down “nuclear” and even “thermonuclear” employment verdicts at an alarming rate. The latest addition to that growing list comes from San Diego, where a jury awarded a former substance abuse counselor $105 million after…