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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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Thomas v. Corbyn Restaurant Dev. Corp., 111 Cal. App. 5th 439 (2025)

The parties involved in this personal injury lawsuit settled the case for $475,000. An unknown third-party purporting to be plaintiff’s counsel sent “spoofed” emails to defendants’ counsel providing fraudulent wire instructions for transmitting the settlement proceeds. Defense counsel wired the settlement proceeds to the fraudulent account, and the third party absconded with…

Allison v. Dignity Health, 112 Cal. App. 5th 192 (2025)

Two former registered nurses filed a putative class action against their former employer, alleging various wage and hour claims. Although the trial court initially granted in part and denied in part plaintiffs’ motion for class certification, a different trial court judge subsequently granted Dignity Health’s motion to decertify the class based on post-certification discovery…

CRST Expedited, Inc. v. Superior Court, 2025 WL 1874891 (Cal. Ct. App. 2025)

Espiridion Sanchez filed this PAGA action against his former employer on behalf of himself and other allegedly “aggrieved employees.” The employer filed a motion to compel arbitration of Sanchez’s individual PAGA claims, relying on the United States Supreme Court’s opinion in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana, 596 U.S. 639…

Velarde v. Monroe Operations, LLC, 111 Cal. App. 5th 1009 (2025)

The Court noted “[t]here was extensive evidence of procedural unconscionability, with an adhesive contract, buried in a stack of 31 documents to be signed as quickly as possible while a human resources manager waited, before Velarde could start work that same day.” In addition, “[m]ost problematically, in response to Velarde’s statement that she…

Lampkin v. County of Los Angeles, 2025 WL 1874669 (Cal. Ct. App. 2025)

D’Andre Lampkin, a deputy in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, investigated a man whom he believed was soliciting a prostitute. (In reality, the suspect was one of Lampkin’s retired law enforcement colleagues having lunch with his girlfriend.) Following an altercation between Lampkin and the suspect, Lampkin reported the incident to…

Allos v. Poway Unified Sch. Dist., 2025 WL 1864797 (Cal. Ct. App. 2025)

Kheloud Allos sued her former employer, the Poway Unified School District, for alleged violations of the FEHA and the Labor Code based on the district’s refusal to allow her to work exclusively from home following the COVID pandemic. Allos, who worked as a senior business systems analyst, refused to return to…

Carranza v. City of Los Angeles, 111 Cal. App. 5th 388 (2025)

Lilian Carranza, an LAPD captain, learned that a photo of a topless woman who looked like but was not Carranza was circulating electronically among LAPD personnel. Carranza asked the Department to notify its employees that the photo was not of her and to order the employees to stop sharing it with one…

Ames v. Ohio Dep’t of Youth Servs., 605 U.S. ___, 145 S. Ct. 1540 (2025)

Marlean Ames, a heterosexual woman, alleged under Title VII that she had been denied a management promotion and demoted based on her sexual orientation. The district court and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals granted and affirmed respectively the employer’s motion for summary judgment based on plaintiff’s failure to…

As we’ve previously reported, the California Legislature last year passed and Governor Newsom signed into law AB 2499, which expanded existing leave requirements for California employers. Prior to passage of AB 2499, California already required employers: (1) to permit employees who are victims of certain violent crimes to obtain relief and (2) to provide such crime victim employees with reasonable accommodations for their safety…