Rob Carrol Named to 2023 ‘Top Labor & Employment Attorneys’ by Daily Journal

Rob has previously been named a “Top Lawyer” in 2021 and 2020.

Rob is a veteran labor and employment practitioner, with an emphasis on traditional labor law, wage/hour class action, agricultural labor, employment discrimination and wrongful termination matters. Rob’s clients range from Silicon Valley startups to Fortune 200 companies, including many in the food and beverage, manufacturing, solid waste disposal, agriculture, insurance, and hospitality sectors.

Rob’s clients include Breville Group, Califia Farms, Enel Group, The Louis Roederer Family, Lagunitas Brewing Co., Sun Pacific Farming Cooperative, and more. He began his labor law practice in California in 1977 when there was only “traditional labor” and “no employment law,” he told Daily Journal.

California had only recently passed its first-in-the nation Agricultural Relations Labor Act (ALRA) and Rob was one of the few “management side lawyers in the state who could speak Spanish,” which enabled him to prepare witnesses and, if necessary, challenge translations in hearings held under the new law. In fact, as he told the Daily Journal, he regarded it “as almost malpractice if you couldn’t examine witnesses in their native language.”

Several of Rob’s current client relationships arose from the ALRA, including Sun Pacific, whom he started representing in 1978 in agricultural labor matters, and later in various wage/hour class action matters, two of which are active today in Kern County. In one of the initial cases, the opening “settlement demand was $176 million,” he told Daily Journal, however, after defeating plaintiffs’ class certification motion, “we got a complete dismissal. Fingers crossed, we do it again here.”