LAWYERS LOCK UP COPS AS CLIENTS

Local firm gaining stature in labor disputes

 

The following story by Kathy Robertson appeared recently the Sacramento Business Journal. She profiles the law firm of Mastagni, Holstedt, Amick, Miller & Johnsen, who have represented Local 1245 members in Workers Comp and other matters for nearly 40 years.

Corrections U.S.A. members in New Jersey were wrestling with wage-and-hour issues when James Baiardi heard the Mastagni law firm in Sacramento worked on similar problems.

A connection was made—and the firm felt like family, said Baiardi, executive committee chair.  Now Mastagni has Corrections U.S.A. as a national account.  The group represents more than 80,000 public-sector correctional officers across the country.

There’s a deluge of new business at the mid-size Sacramento labor and employment firm as public-sector employers facing huge budget deficits look to pare back wages and benefit costs. Mastagni, Holstedt, Amick, Miller & Johnsen A.P.C. represents a range of private and public-sector clients. It’s known as a powerful ally of cops and firefighters anxious to keep hard-won protections while states like Wisconsin seek to limit the right of public employees to bargain collectively.

The 38-year-old firm is housed in an unpretentious brick building on I Street in downtown Sacramento.

“They have a funny commitment to law enforcement and correctional officers,” Baiardi said. “When you walk in, you can tell it’s a passion for them.”

Mastagni is attracting not only new business, but new lawyers, including some from surprising places.

Judy Odbert, a senior supervising assistant with the Sacramento County Public Defender’s Office, will go to work for the firm next month to represent cops instead of the folks they arrest. When she arrives, the firm will add criminal defense to its services.

Her move comes after wrenching rounds of cuts at the budget-strapped defender’s office- and offers Odbert the promise of doing something new.

“She’s one of our leaders – our bright light,” county Public Defender Paulino Duran said. “It’s a shame. Our instability is causing people to re-evaluate all sorts of things.”

New college grads of the caliber Mastagni seldom saw before are serious about landing in Sacramento, too.

“I heard about the firm by word of mouth, which says something in itself,” said Stuart Tubis, who will graduate from Harvard Law School in May and go to work for Mastagni after he takes the state bar exam. “They have a very good reputation as up-and-coming, doing interesting work with labor issues.”

Fighting Cuts

The labor issues run the gamut from outside contracting of county legal work to how holiday pay is used to determine police officer retirement benefits.

The Mastagni firm represents the Sacramento County Attorneys Association in a lawsuit filed April I against the county over the controversial “71-J” provision in its charter.

The provision prohibits the county from contracting out county services if doing so causes county employees to be laid off or displaced.

The lawsuit alleges Sacramento County eliminated 12 full-time positions in the Public Defender’s office last year, resulting in 10 layoffs and an overload of felony and misdemeanor cases. To handle the overload, the office had to contract with private attorneys to do the work. The lawsuit seeks $17 million in back pay, reinstatement of attorneys who were laid off and a limit on outside contracting.

Duran declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said the county has taken the position that private attorneys may be hired through the Conflict Criminal Defenders Office to handle overload cases.

The Mastagni firm filed another 7l-J lawsuit on behalf of the Sacramento County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association in late 2009 that’s set for hearing in August.

In other current cases, the firm filed suit on behalf of about 60 private security guards seeking compensation for unpaid overtime.

The employer required guards to work at multiple sites during the same work week, but only paid overtime when guards worked more than 40 hours at one site, said Jeff Edwards, an associate at Mastagni. “That case is the reason why overtime laws exist”.

One of the plaintiffs worked 70 to 80 hours a week to support his family, collecting pay he should have made on far fewer hours if he’s been paid legitimate overtime, Edwards said.

A grievance filed by the firm against the City of Sacramento on behalf of the Sacramento Police Officers Association alleges the city sought to exclude accrued holiday time from member retirement benefits.

Officers earn about four extra holiday leave hours each pay period to compensate for the fact that their job requires them to work on holidays most employees take off. Under state law, this accrued time counts toward an officer’s retirement benefits so long as they are meant to compensate for hours earned during the year before the officer retires, the firm claims.

“This kind of thing never ever happened before,” said David Mastagni Sr., founder of the firm. “Cities and counties have hired ingenious attorneys to go through charters, constitutions, and memorandums of understanding to reinterpret contracts and get out of payment.”

Spokeswoman Chris Andis said Sacramento County plays strictly by the rules but also is looking for ways to minimize labor costs, including a plan to provide lower retirement benefits to new employees.

“We always meet and confer as required by law and operate using labor relations,” she said.

Bargaining to the Extreme

The same issues play out nationwide. “It’s rough, almost like an assault on law enforcement and corrections,” Baiardi said. “Every politician wants to jump up  and down about  pensions, but no one wants to stand up and say, “I’ve got your back, too, when it comes to fighting crime.”

The California Correctional Peace Officers  Association has a long–term relationship with the Mastagni  law firm, said Dave Sanders, chief operating counsel for the union.

“They do both civil work and workers’ comp work for us,” he said. ‘We are happy to have them team.”

The boom in interest has a local payoff.  Annual revenue at the Mastagni firm is expected to increase by as much as $2 million this year.  The firm has about 40 lawyers, the same as last year.  A few have moved on, while others like Odbert and Tubis are ready to come on board.

“I don’t have a recruitment problem,” Mastagni said. “I have an inundation-with-applicants problem.”

The firm is not the same place as it was two years ago, he added.

“It’s no longer ‘meet, greet and resolve.’ It’s concession-bargaining to the extreme.”

Others agree.

“This feels a lot like it did in the late ’80s, early ’90s, only 10 times worse,” said Robert Bonsall, a partner at the Sacramento labor firm Beeson Tayer & Bodine. “It’s really a holding strategy to minimize the cuts.”

Unions are in a difficult situation of trying to get “the quickest, fastest deal they can in what they perceive as the downward slide,” Bonsall said.

But things appear to be bottoming out, he added. “Getting back what you’ve lost is never an easy task, but clients seem to feel like they are going to survive. Employees, if they stick together, will be stronger. There’s a general sense of more solidarity after the debacle in Wisconsin.”