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.

Kizer v. Tristar Risk Mgmt., 13 Cal. App. 5th 830 (2017)

Plaintiffs Valerie Kizer and Sharal Williams filed this putative class action, alleging their former employer had misclassified them and other similarly situated claims examiners as exempt from overtime. The trial court denied the class certification motion on the ground that plaintiffs had failed to show they had worked days or hours that would

Mendoza v. Nordstrom Inc., 865 F.3d 1261 (9th Cir. 2017)

In response to three questions asked of it by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court opined as follows:

  1. A day of rest is guaranteed for each workweek. Periods of more than six consecutive days of work that stretch across more than one workweek are not per

Light v. California Dep’t of Parks & Recreation, 14 Cal. App. 5th 75 (2017)

Melony Light worked as an assistant, office technician and eventually a staff services analyst at the Ocotillo Wells District of the California Department of Parks and Recreation. Light alleged that she had been retaliated against for having been a witness in an investigation of another employee’s complaint of discrimination. She

Alamillo v. BNSF Ry. Co., 2017 WL 3648514 (9th Cir. 2017)

Antonio Alamillo, who worked as a locomotive engineer for BNSF, missed several calls and was suspended on at least two occasions before being terminated. Around the same time, Alamillo began to suspect he was experiencing a medical problem and was soon diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea (“OSA”) for which he was prescribed a

Merrick v. Hilton Worldwide, Inc., 2017 WL 3496030 (9th Cir. 2017)

Sixty-year-old Charles Merrick was terminated from his job as Director of Property Operations at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines Hotel as part of a reduction in force. Merrick sued for age discrimination under the Fair Employment and Housing Act, among other things. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of Hilton,

Aviles-Rodriguez v. Los Angeles Cmty. Coll. Dist., 2017 WL 3712199 (Cal. Ct. App. 2017)

Guillermo Aviles-Rodriguez was employed as a professor for the Los Angeles Community College District (“LACCD”). Although Aviles-Rodriguez was notified on March 5, 2014 that his tenure had been denied by the Board of Trustees of the LACCD, his employment did not end until June 30, 2014, which was the last day

Williams v. Superior Court, 3 Cal. 5th 531 (2017)

Michael Williams was an employee of Marshalls of CA in Costa Mesa, California. After slightly more than a year of employment, Williams brought a representative action against Marshalls under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (“PAGA”), alleging Marshalls had failed to provide its employees with meal and rest breaks, accurate wage statements,

Minnick v. Automotive Creations, Inc., 13 Cal. App. 5th 1000 (2017)

Nathan Minnick, who had worked for only six months before his employment ended, sued his former joint employers under PAGA, alleging their vacation policy violated state law because it required employees who worked for less than one year to forfeit their vested vacation pay. The trial court sustained the employers’ demurrer and dismissed the

Parrish v. Latham & Watkins LLP, 3 Cal. 5th 767 (2017)

In a prior litigation, FLIR Systems, Inc. and Indigo Systems Corp. (collectively, “FLIR”) brought suit against their former employees, William Parrish and E. Timothy Fitzgibbons (the “Former Employees”), for, among other things, misappropriation of trade secrets. The Former Employees defeated those claims and then obtained a ruling that the misappropriation of trade secrets

Sviridov v. City of San Diego, 2017 WL 3493855 (Cal. Ct. App. 2017)

Aleksei Sviridov, a former police officer for the City of San Diego, was terminated from his job in 2007, reinstated in 2008 and then failed to return to work thereafter, which resulted in a second termination. Following years of litigation and three prior appeals, the case was remanded to the trial