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Daniel B. Chammas

Daniel B. Chammas

Partner / Los Angeles

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213-237-2442
OVERVIEW REPRESENTATIVE EXPERIENCE NEWS & INSIGHTS EVENTS

Daniel Chammas is the Office Managing Partner of FordHarrison's Los Angeles office and is a skilled litigator with extensive experience defending companies against wage and hour class actions and PAGA actions.

Daniel focuses his practice on "high stakes,"  collective actions alleging "off-the-clock violations," missed breaks, discrimination, and employee misclassification. He has personally managed and prevailed in more than a dozen multi-million dollar class actions.

Daniel also represents clients in lawsuits over trade secrets, non-solicitation clauses, and covenants not to compete.  He defends companies who have hired high level executives and are being sued for misappropriation of trade secrets and customer theft.  Just as effectively, he also has initiated lawsuits in order to protect a company from a departing employee’s efforts to take customers to a competitor.

In addition, Daniel has litigated and resolved every type of employment dispute, including individual employment claims for wrongful termination, sexual harassment, racial discrimination and  unpaid wages.

In addition to his litigation work, Daniel advises clients on a whole array of employment issues, including recruiting and hiring a competitors’ employees, terminating employees, drafting employee handbooks and complying with California and federal wage and hour laws, as well as leave and disability rules.

Daniel represents Fortune 500 companies, premier providers of goods and services across the country, entertainment studios and small businesses with varying levels of employees.

Honors & Awards

  • "Southern California Rising Stars," Super Lawyers magazine, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2013 and 2014

  • Defeated California wage and hour class action against leading provider of health care services alleging meal period violations, reporting time claims, and unpaid overtime by simultaneously arguing that some claims could not properly proceed as a class action and the remaining claims were subject to summary judgment.

  • Defended the premier global provider of wireless tracking and recovery systems for mobile assets in a wage and hour class action. Successfully argued before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which agreed with a lower court ruling and denied compensation to an employee who alleged his commute to work and other activities should have been paid time.

  • Successfully defended a client in an invasion of privacy consumer class action with allegations that the company placed and recorded hundreds of telephone calls to individuals per day without their consent. The class – which had originally sought tens of millions of dollars – could not be certified because the recordings were authorized by state tariffs.

  • Defeated class certification of a wage and hour class action alleging the misclassification of exempt supervisors, and then prevailed in a jury trial when 16 individual plaintiffs, who could not represent a class, still pursued their claims in court individually.

  • Represented and defended a leader in the portrait photography industry in an off-the-clock class action in federal court. The district court denied the motion to certify a class of over 3,000 employees.

  • Prevailed in a class action brought by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which alleged that requiring applicants for employment to submit to a "nerve pace test" violated the state's disability discrimination laws.

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Education
  • Stanford Law School
    J.D., 1999
  • University of California, Los Angeles
    B.A., summa cum laude, 1996
Services
Bar Admissions
  • California
Court Admissions
  • U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
  • U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
  • U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California
  • U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit