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.

A San Diego jury awarded that amount to a former employee who claimed he was wrongfully terminated based on his arrest record and then defamed.

Michael Tilkey worked for Allstate Insurance for 30 years and was fired from his job as a field sales leader after he admitted to Allstate that he was arrested for domestic violence against his then-girlfriend.  Although Tilkey was not convicted

California Governor Jerry Brown has signed Assembly Bill 2770 (Assembly Member Irwin; D-Thousand Oaks), an act to amend Section 47 of the Civil Code.  The bill should protect both sexual harassment victims and employers against defamation claims from alleged harassers.

The bill was sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce and passed the Legislature with unanimous, bipartisan support—presumably in recognition that victims and employers

We invite you to review our newly-posted July 2018 California Employment Law Notes, a comprehensive review of the latest and most significant developments in California employment law. The highlights include:

Maldonado v. Epsilon Plastics, Inc., 22 Cal. App. 5th 1308 (2018)

Olvin Maldonado filed this class action against his employer based upon an improperly adopted Alternative Workweek Schedule (“AWS”). The Court of Appeal affirmed the judgment of the trial court, finding that Epsilon failed to prove that there had been a preadoption vote of the employees adopting a 10/2 AWS (a 12-hour/day schedule

Canales v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 23 Cal. App. 5th 1262 (2018)

Fabio Canales and Andy Cortes sued Wells Fargo under PAGA for an alleged violation of Cal. Lab. Code § 226 for failure to provide an itemized wage statement concurrently with a terminated employee’s final wages paid in-store. The trial court granted summary judgment to Wells Fargo on the ground that it

Campbell v. State of Hawaii Dep’t of Educ., 892 F.3d 1005 (9th Cir. 2018)

Patricia Campbell was employed by the Hawaii Department of Education (“DOE”) for nine years until she resigned because she was allegedly harassed and degraded by students on the basis of her race (white) and her sex. She alleges that students called her offensive names (including “f*cking haole”) and that

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

Raines v. Coastal Pac. Food Distrib., Inc., 23 Cal. App. 5th 667 (2018)

Terri Raines sued Coastal Pacific individually and under the Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) for failure to furnish her and other employees accurate itemized wage statements showing the applicable hourly rates in effect during the pay period and the corresponding number of hours worked at each hourly rate as required

Newland v. County of Los Angeles, 234 Cal. Rptr. 3d 374 (Cal. Ct. App. 2018)

Donald Prigo worked as a Deputy Public Defender for the County. One day on his way home from work, Prigo hit a car driven by Kevin Vargas who was forced off the road and injured a pedestrian (plaintiff, Jake Newland). Newland sued Prigo, Vargas and the County for negligence,

Liberty Surplus Ins. Corp. v. Ledesma & Meyer Constr. Co., 233 Cal. Rptr. 3d 487 (Cal. S. Ct. 2018)

Ledesma & Meyer Construction Company (“L&M”) contracted with the San Bernardino Unified School District to manage a construction project at a middle school where a 13-year-old student (“Jane Doe”) was allegedly sexually abused by Darold Hecht, an assistant superintendent hired by L&M. After Doe sued