(Reuters) - After 18 months of mind-bendingly complex procedural litigation in New York and California state courts, California lawyer Jinshu “John” Zhang is running out of options to evade arbitration in New York against Dentons, the firm that ousted him in 2021 in the midst of an exceedingly ugly dispute over a multimillion-dollar contingency fee.
An intermediate California appeals court ruled on Wednesday that it’s up to a New York arbitrator to decide whether Zhang is bound by the Dentons partnership agreement he signed -- or whether Zhang was actually an employee of the firm and can therefore invoke a California state law mandating California jurisdiction for disputes between California workers and their employers.
The new appellate ruling foreclosed an intricate litigation maneuver that, according to the court, might have allowed employees to undermine the Federal Arbitration Act by using the state law, known as Labor Code Section 925, to contravene their employment agreements.
“The proposition that Labor Code Section 925, when invoked by a plaintiff, automatically strips another state’s courts of jurisdiction is unsupported by legal authority, is antithetical to notions of comity and is at odds with the animating purpose of the Federal Arbitration Act,” wrote Justice Elizabeth Grimes of the California 2nd District Court of Appeal for a panel that also included Justices Maria Stratton and John Wiley.
Zhang counsel Daniel Csillag of Murphy Rosen told me by email that...
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