Peter Rukin

Peter Rukin is a partner in Rukin Hyland. Peter specializes in complex employment litigation, with a focus on class wage and hour litigation, equal employment opportunity claims, and the representation of executive and professional employees in employment matters.

Peter graduated from New York University School of Law in 1991 and served as law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Harry D. Leinenweber in Chicago. Following his clerkship, he practiced at employee-side firms in Chicago (Stowell & Friedman) and New York (Vladeck Waldman Elias & Engelhard) and served as Of Counsel in the Employment Law Department at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in San Francisco, before starting his own firm in March 2003.

Peter has represented tens of thousands of workers in class and collective action cases spanning three decades.

Peter is currently Chair of the Bar Association of San Francisco Labor & Employment Section Executive Committee, and is a former member of the State Bar of California Labor & Employment Section Executive Committee. He is a chapter author of the CEB Treatise California Wage and Hour Law and Litigation, and has written numerous articles on employment issues in national and state bar publications. He is also a long-time member of the San Francisco Board of the New Israel Fund.

Peter is admitted to the State Bars of California, Illinois, and New York, the bars of various district courts, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court.

Representative Cases and Experience

Peter has represented tens of thousands of workers in class and collective action cases spanning three decades.  He served as one of the attorneys for plaintiffs in several groundbreaking sex discrimination class actions against Wall Street investment firms, and was one of the first lawyers in California to take a wage and hour class action to trial. His cases and reported decisions include:

• Recovery of tens of millions of dollars for wage and hour violations against corporate employers, including Google, Juniper Networks, Cendant Corp., CVS, T-Mobile, Fluor, Canon USA, Bank of the West, Rockstar Games/Angel Studios, Farmers Insurance, and Sierra Pacific Industries.
• Trial counsel in unpaid wage class action on behalf of 7,000 truck drivers who drove missions in Iraq in support of the U.S. military from 2003 through 2011.
• Recovery of $55 million on behalf of a class of ESOP participants.
• Krzesniak v. Cendant, 2007 WL 1795703 (N.D. Cal. 2007)
• Collins v. Overnite, 105 Call.App. 4th 171 (Cal. Ct. of Appeals 2003)
• Kolstad v. ADA, 527 U.S. 526 (U.S. Sup. Ct. 1999) (counsel of record for amici)
• Lott v. Westinghouse Savannah River Corp, 200 F.R.D. 539 (2000)
• Meloff v. New York Life, 1999 WL 604871 (1999)
• Feder v. Bristol Myers Squibb, 33 F.Supp. 319 (1999)
• Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith v. Adcock, 176 F.R.D. 539 (1997)