Cornelia Dai is a partner at Hadsell Stormer Keeny Richardson & Renick, LLP (formerly Hadsell & Stormer, Inc.)
and has been with the firm since 1999. Ms. Dai's practice specializes in individual employment cases, class actions
involving violations of wage and hour laws, and other civil rights and international human rights cases.
She has practiced in both state and federal court, and has represented clients at all stages of litigation.
In 2008, she and her co-counsel obtained a judgment of more than $5.1 million in a class action
involving violations of overtime and meal and rest break laws in
Wang v. Chinese Daily News.
In 2007, she was co-counsel in
Rivera v. City of Los Angeles, a sexual harassment and retaliation
case which resulted in a settlement of $600,000. She has also been the appellate attorney on a
number of successful matters, including
Tatreau v. City of Los Angeles, a First Amendment case
which she argued before the Ninth Circuit and in which she obtained a reversal of the district
court's grant of summary judgment. She was one of the plaintiffs' counsel in
South Central
Farmers Feeding Families v. City of Los Angeles, a case brought on behalf of over 300 low-income
families in a struggle to preserve land for a much-needed urban community garden in South Los Angeles.
In addition, she was one of the Doe plaintiffs' counsel in the state litigation of the international
human rights case
Doe v. Unocal, which involved human rights abuses by a large oil company against
Burmese villagers. She is currently also co-counsel in an action brought against various hotels in the Los Angeles International
Airport area for failure to pass service charges on to workers in violation of the Hotel Service Charge Reform
Ordinance, Los Angeles Municipal Code § 184.00, et seq.
Ms. Dai has been listed in Southern California
Super Lawyers® – Rising Stars edition, published
by Los Angeles Magazine and Law & Politics Magazine, each
year since 2005. She was featured in the July 2007 issue
of
Southern
California Super Lawyers® - Rising Stars edition,
in an article entitled “For Abusive Employers, The Dai
Has Been Cast.”
She and her colleague, Lauren Teukolsky, are co-authors
of the 2004 update of “Employment Discrimination Law,” Chapter
6 of the National Lawyers Guild Employee and Union Member Guide to Labor Law. Ms.
Dai currently sits on the Executive Committee of the Labor and Employment Law
section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. She is also a member
of the California Employment Lawyers Association and the National Lawyers Guild.
Ms. Dai is a 1995 graduate of U.C. Berkeley, with a Bachelor of Arts degree
in Sociology. She earned her Juris Doctorate at U.S.C. Law School in
1999.