Douglas Hart

Douglas Hart is one of the most accomplished employment class action litigators in the country. Over four decades defending employers, he handled close to 300 employment-related class actions, served as national class action counsel for Fortune 100 companies, and argued and won a unanimous decision in one of the most significant employment cases the California Supreme Court has addressed. He helped pioneer wage and hour class action defense in Southern California, building one of the region’s earliest dedicated teams and defending some of the largest aggregate disputes in the country for companies across the insurance, healthcare, retail, financial services, and construction industries. Doug has seen exactly how these cases are won, lost, and valued, and he brings that hard-won judgment to bear for every party at the table.

Doug’s process is built on total command of the case. He masters the record, tests each side’s claims and defenses against the law and the evidence, and gives parties an unvarnished assessment of how their case will hold up and what it is genuinely worth. That clarity recalibrates risk on both sides of the table, and Doug delivers it with respect. He addresses every concern a party raises, because whatever matters to them stands between the case and resolution. From there, he isolates the central issue dividing the parties and stays with the case, in session and beyond it, until it resolves.

Doug began his practice in the labor and employment group at Musick, Peeler & Garrett in Los Angeles, where intensive jury trial experience and management-side labor matters, from collective bargaining to strikes and picketing, grounded everything that followed. At Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton, he built and led the employment class action team that established his national practice, and national insurers entrusted him with some of the largest wage and hour class actions in the country, engagements that carried him through the California Supreme Court and produced client relationships spanning decades. He continued that work as a partner at Sidley Austin and concluded his firm career as a partner and West Coast labor and employment practice group leader at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. Across four decades, Doug has litigated employment disputes at every stage, from first pleading through the state’s highest court, and he can tell parties with real authority what awaits them if they don’t resolve, and exactly what it’s worth to them if they do.

Doug engages the substance of these cases at every level. Wage and hour class actions turn on statistics, sampling, and damages models, and with a master’s degree in applied economics focused on econometrics, he works through that analysis himself rather than around it. His long record negotiating collective bargaining agreements taught him how workplaces actually function, letting him pressure-test allegations and defenses against operational reality. And after resolving countless disputes through mediation as an advocate, he learned exactly what separates a mediation that moves from one that stalls. He runs a prepared, honest room and keeps both sides focused on what resolution actually requires.

Now at Signature Resolution, Doug offers parties what clients, opposing counsel, and union negotiators across the bargaining table all learned to count on: a complete command of the case and a word that holds. For attorneys navigating employment disputes at any scale, he delivers an unflinching assessment of risk, total fluency in the numbers that drive these cases, and the resolve to keep working until both sides can call the outcome a win.