By: Karen Kubin
In 2010, changes in the employment law landscape may require a roadmap to follow, especially in light of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ pledge for more aggressive enforcement of workplace protection laws. As employment litigator Karen Kubin of Morrison & Foerster notes, there will likely be stepped-up enforcement of federal employment laws in virtually every sector.
Ms. Kubin notes that just this month, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division announced that it intends to pursue more employment discrimination class actions against state and local governments, making vigorous use of Title VII pattern or practice suits, which had lagged under the Bush administration.
She also points out that earlier this year, the Labor Department signaled that it too was beefing up regulatory enforcement, which also had lagged during the prior eight years, and increased investigations into potential violations of the wage-and-hour and other federal labor laws should be expected.
“Often, these regulatory initiatives lead to private class actions
piggybacking on them,” says Ms. Kubin, a partner in Morrison & Foerster’s San Francisco office. “Now would be a good time for businesses to conduct compliance audits of their employment policies and practices to protect against being the next target.”
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Karen Kubin
Partner, Morrison & Foerster LLP, San Francisco
Karen Kubin defends employers in class actions and other complex employment litigation alleging wage and hour violations, discrimination, harassment, wrongful discharge, trade secret theft, ERISA violations, and retaliation under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other whistleblower laws. Ms. Kubin has broad jury and bench trial experience in both federal and state courts; she is also experienced in domestic and international arbitrations. Her client list spans an array of industries, including the communications, consumer
products, energy, entertainment, financial services, life sciences,
publishing, real estate, retail, technology, transportation, and venture
capital sectors.
Among Ms. Kubin’s published decisions are:
• Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court, 165 Cal. App. 4th 25 (2008), granting the defendant’s petition for a writ of mandate and directing the trial court to vacate its order certifying a class of some 59,000 restaurant workers claiming meal and rest break violations and to issue a new order denying class certification. A petition for review has been granted by the California Supreme Court;
• Dunbar v. Albertson’s, Inc., 141 Cal. App. 4th 1422 (2006), which
affirmed the denial of class certification in an action alleging
misclassification of grocery managers;
• Matoff v. Brinker Restaurant Corp., 439 F. Supp. 2d 1035 (C.D. Cal. 2006), holding in a putative class action brought on behalf of food servers that there is no private right of action for violation of California’s tip pooling statute; and
• Narayan v. Eagle Freight Systems, Inc., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 50465 (N.D. Cal. 2007), granting summary judgment for the defendant in a putative class action brought on behalf of pick-up and delivery drivers alleging that the drivers were misclassified as independent contractors.
Ms. Kubin has spoken on employment law issues on the CBS Evening News and in interviews appearing in The New York Times and CNET News. She was named by the San Francisco Daily Journal and the Los Angeles Daily Journal as one of California’s Top Women Litigators in 2007, and again in 2008, as well as one of California’s Top 100 Lawyers in 2009. Chambers USA also recommended Ms. Kubin in 2009 for her expertise in labor and employment, calling her a “talented and aggressive litigator.”
Ms. Kubin is a member of the State Bar of California and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third and Ninth Circuits and the U.S. District Courts for the Northern, Central, Southern and Eastern Districts of California. She has served as a member of the California State Bar’s Committee on Administration of Justice and as a delegate to its Conference of Delegates.
She is a member of the American Bar Association, the San Francisco Bar Association, and the California State Bar’s section on labor and employment law. She also serves as a mediator and neutral evaluator on employment cases for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Ms. Kubin received her B.A., cum laude, in 1970 from the University of Washington, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Mortar Board, served as editor-in-chief of the university’s yearbook and was honored as the university’s outstanding junior woman. She received her J.D. in 1976 from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif and the Thurston Society and served as managing editor of the Hastings Law Journal. She served as extern in 1976 to
the Honorable Raymond L. Sullivan, associate justice on the California Supreme Court.
Ms. Kubin is actively involved in the San Francisco civic and philanthropic communities, currently serving on the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Opera Guild. She is a former member of the Boards of Trustees of the San Francisco Art Institute and Cornelia Connelly School, and the Boards of Directors of the San Francisco Girls Chorus and Children’s Garden of California.
