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Daniel Fears is a founding partner at Payne & Fears and a seasoned employment law litigator, who has won many jury trials and summary judgments for California employers, large and small.
Dan has obtained many defense jury verdicts and significant “wins” for the firm’s clients in both state and federal court. He represents companies in all aspects of employment law and related civil litigation, including employment law class actions, wrongful termination litigation and preventive advice, traditional labor law advice, litigation and National Labor Relations Board proceedings, employment and housing discrimination, labor-management relations and labor arbitrations, civil rights, trade secrets, investigations, and other employment law litigation and related disputes.
Dan serves as litigation counsel for small, mid-size, and large (Fortune 500) companies in class action and multi-plaintiff litigation, and represents employers in retail, aerospace, national defense, construction, entertainment, banking, hospitality, healthcare, housing, and other industries.
In addition to being a labor and employment attorney and advising national companies on strategic decisions, Dan has been involved in contractual and other disputes between companies and senior executives in which there were proprietary interests at stake. He successfully litigated such cases in which the relationship has severed or terminated and contractual obligations have been the subject of strategizing, negotiating, and even litigation.
Dan has been named as one of the Top 100 Most Powerful Employment Lawyers in the United States by Human Resource Magazine, and was named to the OC 500 by the Orange County Business Journal. He is a Founding Member of the Orange County Bar Foundation, Society of Fellows (now Project Youth OCBF) and a Founding Circle of Justice Member of Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ) – Orange County.