Photo of 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, 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.

Intershop Communications AG v. Superior Court, 104 Cal. App. 4th 191 (2002)

Frank Martinez, a California resident, sued his former employer, Intershop Communications, Inc., and its German parent company for breach of a stock options exchange agreement. The exchange agreement contained a choice-of-law (German law) and forum-selection clause (Hamburg, Germany). The trial court denied Intershop’s motion to stay the proceedings pursuant to the doctrine

Park v. Shin, 313 F.3d 1138 (9th Cir. 2002)

Tae Sook Park sued Bong Kil Shin, the Deputy Consul General of the Korean Consulate in San Francisco, and his wife, Mee Sook Shin, for various employment-related claims arising from Park’s tenure as the Shins’ domestic servant. The Shins argued that they were entitled to consular immunity under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and

Advanced Bionics Corp. v. Medtronic, Inc., 29 Cal. 4th 697 (2002)

Mark Stultz was employed in Minnesota as a senior product specialist for Medtronic, a manufacturer of implantable neurostimulation devices, before resigning his employment and going to work for Advanced Bionics Corporation, one of Medtronic’s competitors located in Sylmar, California. Upon accepting employment with Medtronic, Stultz signed a non-competition agreement, which contained a choice-of-law

Honeywell v. WCAB, 104 Cal. App. 4th 829 (2002)

The Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board (“WCAB”) found that Honeywell had breached its duty to provide its employee, William Wagner, with a workers’ compensation claim form after it became “reasonably certain” of Wagner’s alleged psychiatric injury. As a result, the WCAB held that the 90-day period to contest the alleged injury began and expired without a

Collins v. Overnite Transp. Co., 105 Cal. App. 4th 171 (2003)

The truck drivers in this case filed a class action, seeking unpaid overtime compensation from their employer, Overnite Transportation Company, a motor carrier. Overnite responded by filing a demurrer, seeking dismissal of the drivers’ claims on the ground that Wage Order No. 9 provides an exemption for motor carriers such as Overnite. The

Bussard v. Minimed, Inc., 105 Cal. App. 4th 798 (2003)

Barbara Bussard was injured when Irma Hernandez, a Minimed clerical employee, rear-ended Bussard, who was stopped at a red light. Hernandez was on her way home after she became ill at work the day after Minimed had fumigated its premises in order to eliminate a flea infestation. Bussard sued Minimed on the grounds that

Opinion of Att’y Gen. Bill Lockyer, No. 02-213, 2003 WL 174019 (Jan. 24, 2003)

In this opinion, the California Attorney General determined that employees who are residents of and employed in California are not entitled to the employment-related benefits established under California Military & Veterans Code § 395.05 for leaves of absence occasioned by service in another state’s militia. The Attorney General observed that

Rivero v. AFSCME, AFL-CIO, 105 Cal. App. 4th 913 (2003)

David Rivero was a supervisor of janitors at the International House at UC Berkeley before his employment was terminated when he refused to accept a demotion to dishwasher and pot scrubber in the International House’s kitchen. Rivero sued his union, the AFSCME, for libel, slander and intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other things,

Simo v. UNITE-SW, 322 F.3d 602 (9th Cir. 2003)

Twenty-five garment workers brought suit against their union and its officials after the union allegedly engaged in secondary pressure to remove work from their factory. Among other things, the workers alleged that the union had intentionally inflicted emotional distress upon them. The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of the union on the emotional

Meyer v. Holley, 537 U.S. 280, 123 S. Ct. 824 (2003)

Ellen and David Holley, an interracial couple, sued Triad, Inc., a Triad employee and David Meyer (Triad’s owner) for violation of the federal Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) after the Triad employee allegedly prevented the Holleys from buying a house in Twenty-Nine Palms, California for racially discriminatory reasons. At issue in the case was