Background
Sarju Naran is Chair of the firm’s Employment Law Group. His experience spans from representing small, family-owned businesses to multi-national and high profile publicly-traded companies. He regularly litigates claims of trade secret misappropriation, workforce raiding, unfair competition, wrongful termination, harassment, discrimination, retaliation, wage and hour violations, and other high risk matters.
Sarju is a zealous advocate for his clients, and approaches litigation with creativity and strategy. He also appreciates that litigation can be an unwelcome distraction to business operations, and often comes at a high financial and emotional cost. As such, Sarju is committed to representing his clients with an eye toward prevention, compliance, mitigation, and efficiency.
After spending the first five years of his practice with Hoge Fenton, Sarju was an associate with Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker, LLP in Palo Alto for four years before rejoining Hoge Fenton in May 2010.
Representative Matters
- on behalf of a recently-hired Chief Technical Officer for a Fortune 100 company, pursued and • successfully resolved a declaratory relief action to invalidate an out-of-state non-compete agreement, after obtaining temporary injunctive relief to prevent the CTO’s former Fortune 100 employer from attempting to enforce the non-compete agreement in California
- obtained a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction preventing a former • sales employee of a franchisee business from unlawfully competing through the use of his former employer’s client lists, pending and completed transaction lists, and other confidential, proprietary, and trade secret information
- favorably settled a former employee’s disability discrimination, failure to accommodate, and workers’ compensation retaliation lawsuit on behalf of a sole-share theatrical design company
- on behalf of a prominent national Silicon Valley-based company, investigated internal complaints lodged against a Vice President for alleged disability discrimination and retaliation
Speaking Engagements
Sarju is a frequent speaker, having presented seminars to clients, professional organizations, and trade associations on such topics as social media in the workplace, trade secret audits and protection, wage and hour exemptions, independent contractor classifications, sexual harassment (AB 1825 training), performance evaluations, document management and retention, employee leave issues, workers’ compensation, employment terminations, and employment law updates. Sarju has also been a panelist on electronic discovery issues for the Santa Clara County Bar Association.
Professional and Community Activities
- Alumnus of the San Jose/Silicon Valley Community Leadership Program
- Member of the California Minority Council Program
- Coach for Lincoln High School’s Mock Trial Team