Payne & Fears’ Restaurants and Hospitality attorneys serve a diverse group of clients from local taco eateries to international resorts. We understand our clients’ unique needs to provide them with timely and practical advice about current legal developments, outstanding service, and cost-effective legal services. We provide a broad range of employment, traditional labor, and business services to restaurant owners and managers, management companies, franchisees, and hoteliers.

Our attorneys routinely counsel clients on the following legal issues:

  • Defense of single-plaintiff, class actions, and Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) suits for wage-and-hour, meal and rest break, off-the-clock work and related claims
  • Federal and state law exemption analysis for supervisors, chefs, and other frequently challenged positions
  • Pay equity advice and audits
  • Local hotel minimum wage ordinances
  • Rest and meal period issues unique to housekeeping and food/beverage employees
  • Tipping, tip-sharing, and service charge issues
  • Pay-per-room compensation for housekeeping employees
  • Health, safety, and security issues unique to hotels and restaurants
  • Union organizing campaigns and collective bargaining; unit classification of employees

Representative Restaurants & Hospitality Clients: 

  • ABM
  • American Golf Corporation
  • Balboa Bay Club
  • Marriott International
  • Monarch Beach Resort
  • Original Pancake House

Our representative successes within the retail sector include:

  • Defeated a race discrimination case in federal court in Salt Lake City for a major international hotel chain. The employee alleged that his hours were reduced because of his race, and that he ultimately was terminated because the employer hired an employee who was not African-American and assigned him all of his work. After obtaining complete dismissal of the case at the pleading stage in district court, the decision was upheld by the 10th Circuit, and a petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court was defeated. 
  • Obtained summary adjudication for a national golf course management client in California, where the employee alleged that she was sexually assaulted at a golf-related event away from the employer’s premises, by establishing that the alleged conduct was disputed by witnesses, but if it occurred it was not committed in furtherance of the employer’s interests.
  • Negotiated a favorable settlement for our client, a Los Angeles-based footwear importer, in the client’s $10 million breach of contract action against the designer and distributor of the Ed Hardy fashion label. Ng v. Phillip Simon Development.
  • Attorneys from Payne & Fears successfully defended the firm’s client against allegations that its policy prohibiting two-wheeled vehicles from entering its theme park was a violation of the Unruh Act and California Disabled Persons Act. Baughman v. Disney, 217 Cal. App. 4th 1438 (2013).

Industry Experience