Stephen M. Benardo, Esq.

LOS ANGELES

Employment law with a focus on wage and hour class actions; has significant expertise in harassment, discrimination, wrongful termination, retaliation, whistleblower, disability, unfair competition, trade secrets and employee mobility disputes. Also handles business litigation, landlord/tenant and personal injury cases.

Mr. Benardo has three decades of employment law experience representing both employers (of all sizes) and employees. He is regarded as an expert on employment law and civil rights issues, including almost every area of law governing the employment relationship. He is a member of several mediation panels and has served as mediator, in person and virtually, in a wide range of disputes.

As a litigator, Mr. Benardo has represented clients before state and federal appellate courts, trial courts, and administrative agencies. As a defense attorney, he has worked for multi-billion dollar companies, single individuals, and all kinds of clients in between. As a plaintiff's attorney, he has handled cases ranging from class actions with potential damages of over $100 million to individual cases with as little as $10,000 at stake. Since he has concurrently represented both employees and employers, he knows what both rooms are thinking.

Mr. Benardo has an in-depth understanding of wage and hour class actions and PAGA actions, including the class certification process, statistics and surveys, PAGA, and the special claims and defenses that decide these cases. He has both prosecuted and defended wage and hour class actions and PAGA cases and has been class counsel in cases that have settled in the millions of dollars. He has litigated over 100 individual wage and hour cases--FLSA, California Labor Code, overtime exemption misclassification, independent contractor versus employee--on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants in civil court and before the California DLSE.

Mr. Benardo has in-depth experience in unfair competition and trade secret cases, representing clients on all three points of the triangle: 1) employers who lose employees to a competitor, 2) employers who hire employees from a competitor, and 3) employees who move from one competitor to another or start a competing business.

mail@arc4adr.com

(310) 284-8224

http://www.arc4adr.com