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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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We invite you to review our newly-posted November 2020 California Employment Law Notes, a comprehensive review of the latest and most significant developments in California employment law. The highlights include:

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Semprini v. Wedbush Secs., Inc., 2020 WL 6557549 (Cal. Ct. App. 2020)

Joseph Semprini and another employee filed this putative class action against Wedbush for various wage and hour violations based upon an alleged misclassification of similarly situated financial advisors who were treated as exempt employees. Wedbush classified its California financial advisors as exempt from overtime pursuant to the administrative exemption. Since Wedbush pays its…

Laver v. Credit Suisse Secs. (USA), LLC, 976 F.3d 841 (9th Cir. 2020)

Christopher Laver filed a putative class action against Credit Suisse, alleging breach of contract and other state law claims.  Credit Suisse responded with a motion to dismiss in favor of arbitration premised upon FINRA’s Employee Dispute Resolution Program, which among other things contains a class action wavier.  The district court

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Midwest Motor Supply Co. v. Superior Court, 2020 WL 6305492 (Cal. Ct. App. 2020)

Patrick Finch worked as a sale supervisor for Midwest Motor Supply and was employed in 2014 pursuant to an employment agreement that contained a choice-of-law and forum selection clause invoking Ohio law and venue in Franklin County, Ohio. Finch was promoted in 2016 and received a new compensation plan; he also…

Doe v. Google, Inc., 54 Cal. App. 5th 948 (2020)

Google requires its employees to comply with various confidentiality policies, including policies that allegedly prevent employees from using or disclosing the “skills, knowledge, and experience” they obtained at Google for purposes of competing with Google; policies that prevent employees from disclosing violations of state and federal law either within Google or outside Google to private…

Kramer v. Traditional Escrow, Inc., 56 Cal. App. 5th 13 (2020)

Michelle Kramer filed this wage and hour lawsuit against her employer and its alleged alter ego. A few months after defendants answered the initial complaint, their counsel withdrew, and defendants subsequently chose not to participate in the case. In violation of the California Rules of Court, defendants changed their mailing address without giving notice…

Hooked Media Group, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 55 Cal. App. 5th 323 (2020)

Hooked Media, a startup company that Apple expressed interest in acquiring, sued Apple after Apple passed on the deal but three of Hooked’s most important employees (including two engineers and the Chief Technical Officer) left to work for Apple. Hooked sued for fraud, misappropriation of trade secrets, interference with contract and related…

Tilkey v. Allstate Ins. Co., 2020 WL 6268474 (Cal. Ct. App. 2020)

Allstate terminated Michael Tilkey, a 30-year employee who sold life insurance, after Tilkey’s arrest in Arizona following a domestic dispute with his girlfriend; he was arrested for “criminal damage deface, possession or use of drug paraphernalia and disorderly conduct, disruptive behavior.”  Domestic violence charges were attached to the criminal damage and disorderly

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Following last week’s historic presidential election and a forthcoming transition of power, Proskauer’s Anthony Oncidi and Laura Fant join XpertHR Legal Editor David Weisenfeld for a podcast conversation on the changes employers can expect after President-elect Biden takes office in January.

Employers – listen now in order to plan ahead for what could be significant shifts from the new administration in Washington.

Listen to the…

As jurisdictions continue to respond to COVID-19 with new rules, regulations, orders and guidance, employers must ensure that they adhere to these requirements as they manage business operations.

To assist multi-state employers as they navigate these developments, we have created ProTrack COVID-19, a state and local tracker tool. Our proprietary tracker allows employers to search the legal requirements in the jurisdictions where they conduct business,…