Cullen, Jack

Joshua Piovia-Scott specializes in both class action and individual civil rights cases involving racial and sexual harassment and discrimination, slavery and human trafficking, retaliation for whistleblowing, police misconduct, the right to free speech and wage and hour violations.  In May 2011, Mr. Piovia-Scott was promoted to be the firm's first ever Senior Associate. 

Mr. Piovia-Scott has worked on a wide range of cases, including Ruiz v. Jackson, in which a jury awarded $1.6 million against a Sony Executive for coercing a Filipino woman into service as a domestic slave, Hernandez v. Tyco, a wage and hour class action on behalf of factory workers that settled for $4.9 million and Navarro v. Pacifica, a wage and hour class action on behalf of low wage hotel workers that settled for $6.5 million. 

Mr. Piovia-Scott recently secured a published appellate court victory for the exercise of the First Amendment right to political speech.  He is one of the lead counsel in the case of former Orange County Sheriff Jeff Bardzik, in which Bardzik alleges that he was retaliated against by former-Sheriff Michael Carona for supporting Carona's opponent  in the election for County Sheriff.  Mr. Piovia-Scott successfully opposed defendants' summary judgment motion and then briefed and argued the case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.  On March 28, 2011, the Ninth Circuit issued a published opinion holding that Bardzik could proceed to trial on his First Amendment right to political speech claim and that Carona is not entitled to qualified immunity for retaliating against Bardzik.  Bardzik v. County of Orange, 635 F.3d 1138 (9th Cir. 2011).

Mr. Piovia-Scott received the ‘Religious Liberty Award’ from the ACLU of Southern California in June of 2012 for his work on a case challenging the United States government’s surveillance of Muslim Americans solely on the basis of their religion. Fazaga, et al. v. Federal Bureau of Investigations, et al., SACV11-00301CJC (VBKx).

Mr. Piovia-Scott has been selected as a “Rising Star” by the Los Angeles Magazine and Law & Politics Magazine for each year since 2005.  Mr. Piovia-Scott also serves as an Adjunct Professor at the Loyola School of Law and is scheduled to teach a course on litigating human slavery cases in the Fall of 2012.

Mr. Piovia-Scott graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 2002 as part of the Program in Public Interest Law and Policy and was a member of the second class of the law school’s Concentration in Critical Race Studies.  While in law school, Mr. Piovia-Scott worked for the ACLU of Southern California, the Western Center on Law and Poverty and the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.  He spent his first summer in Guatemala helping prepare a case on behalf of families of people who had been “disappeared” during that country’s civil conflict and his second summer in Geneva, Switzerland working on the World Conference Against Racism.  He joined the Law Offices of Randy Renick in 2002 and Hadsell Stormer Keeny Richardson & Renick in 2008 with the merger of the two firms.

Mr. Piovia-Scott graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and from Berkeley High School.   He sits on the board of directors of Peace Action West, where he worked as a political organizer before attending law school.