The Los Angeles Business Journal has named Tritia Murata, co-chair of Morrison & Foerster’s Employment and Labor Practice Group, a Top Woman Lawyer in 2020. The publication reviewed more than 400 nominations to identify those who have exemplified impressive professional achievement and community leadership throughout their careers.
As a litigation partner, Tritia’s proven skills in the courtroom have led to a number of successful outcomes in complex cases in both state and federal court, involving claims related to alleged wage and hour violations, trade secrets misappropriation, employee and customer raiding, and unfair competition. She also strategically disposes of high-exposure wage-and-hour class actions brought under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA), a California statute authorizing allegedly aggrieved employees to file lawsuits seeking civil penalties. In particular, clients turn to Tritia for her extensive class action experience and impressive track record of successfully defeating class certification in high-exposure wage and hour class actions.
Tritia and her team’s recent successes include securing a complete defense verdict in a landmark PAGA trial, the first seating case to go to trial since the California Supreme Court released a revised interpretation of the Wage Order provision, in which the plaintiff claimed our grocery-store-chain client owed substantial penalties for not providing seats in checkstands for cashiers to use while performing their duties. In another recent case, Tritia convinced a retail-pharmacist plaintiff to voluntarily dismiss her PAGA representative wage-and-hour claims with prejudice, after Tritia moved to strike the PAGA claims as unmanageable.
Tritia also co-led the team that defeated class certification in an action alleging that MoFo’s retail client misclassified its general managers as exempt from California overtime and related laws. The team then successfully moved to strike the plaintiff’s PAGA representative claim on the ground that it could not be manageably tried consistent with our client’s right to due process.
Tritia also secured the dismissal of a PAGA action brought to recover civil penalties on behalf of all of our client’s pharmacy technicians statewide, by leveraging the threat of sanctions resulting from the plaintiff’s repeated failures to comply with her discovery obligations.
As a member of Morrison & Foerster’s Women’s Strategy Committee and the founder and partner sponsor of the Los Angeles office’s Working Parents Affinity Group, Tritia champions the promotion of diversity, both in the firm and in the legal profession.
Outside the firm, Tritia serves on the board of the UCLA Law Women LEAD alumnae network and on the steering committee of the Just the Beginning Summer Legal Institute, a pipeline program dedicated to developing and nurturing interest in the law among young persons from socioeconomic, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds underrepresented in the legal profession. She was named a “2015 California Most Powerful and Influential Woman” by the National Diversity Council and California Diversity Council. She is also a recipient of the State Bar of California’s Wiley W. Manuel Certificate for Pro Bono Legal Services.
Practices