Los Angeles attorney Brian Kabateck won a big overtime employment lawsuit with a $20.2 million settlement against Coca-Cola Bottling Co. of Los Angeles.

Kabateck, partner at Los Angeles-based Quisenberry & Kabateck LLP, filed the lawsuit two years ago on behalf of 1,100 employees at the franchise’s California production and distribution plants.

The case is significant given the $90 million verdict against Farmer’s Insurance Co. that upheld claims adjusters’ arguments that they were not exempt from overtime pay.

In the Coca-Cola lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles and settled Oct. 17, nine current and former employees claim that their jobs as “account managers” were subject to overtime pay because they spent less than 50 percent of their time doing sales. Instead, they were stocking shelves and handling displays like merchandisers or delivery drivers, both of whom receive overtime pay.

“The crux of the whole problem is employers in California are calling people managers, and they aren’t managers at all,” Kabateck said.

According to the lawsuit, account managers worked more than 10 hours a day, or 50 hours a week. The lawsuit also claims the Coca-Cola franchise did not keep records, as required by California law, of the account managers’ time.

Bob Phillips, spokesman at the Coca-Cola franchise headquarters in L.A., declined to comment specifically about the lawsuit, saying only that the company “fully complies with all laws and regulations, including those regarding employment.”

Dueling Diets

Two Los Angeles marketing companies are sweating over the rights to Hollywood’s original celebrity diet, which claims that you can lose up to 10 pounds in 48 hours drinking bottles of a dark orange-mixed juice.

Neither company actually claims any celebrities drink their diet drink. But in federal court in L.A., Sunset Health Products Inc. said a competitor and former distributor is selling bottles that are a knock-off of its “Hollywood 48-Hour Miracle Diet.” The lawsuit was filed last month against Celebrity Products Direct Inc., a Marina del Rey company that makes a similar drink called “The Original Hollywood Celebrity Diet.”

“What’s happened over time is they’ve made it look more and more like ours,” said Lawrence Turner, president of Sunset Health Products, which was founded by an attorney, a motivational speaker and the founder of the 6 Day Bio-Diet. “They’ve changed the label, started to de-emphasize the ‘original’ in the name and emphasize the ‘Hollywood.’ We’ve had customers try to return their product to us and had retailers get their products and think they’ve gotten ours.”

Celebrity Products Direct chief financial officer, Howard Schwartz, said only that “we believe the lawsuit is without basis, and we are vigorously defending it.”

Sunset Health Products has sold 4 million units with a value of $100 million in 35,000 stores in three years.

Lawyer Poll

A slight majority of lawyers sampled would not represent the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon Sept. 11, according to Lawyers Weekly USA, the national magazine for smaller-sized law firms.

In a survey of 450 lawyers, 54 percent said they could not defend an accused terrorist. Of those, 40 percent said they could not do it for moral reasons, and a third said their personal opinions would get in the way.

The other 46 percent said they would consider it their patriotic duty to represent an accused terrorist.

Staff Reporter Amanda Bronstad can be reached at (323) 549-5225 ext. 225 or at [email protected].