Rex S. Heinke is co-head of the Supreme Court and Appellate practice.

Practice & Background

Mr. Heinke has argued over a hundred appeals in federal and state courts throughout the country involving many issues, including administrative law, advertising, alter ego, antitrust, arbitration, attorneys’ fees, bankruptcy, billboards, class actions, complex business disputes, computer software, constitutional law, construction disputes, contracts, copyrights, criminal sentencing, defamation, divorces, docudramas, domestic and international arbitrations, drug testing, employment discrimination, environmental law, entertainment, extraterritoriality of federal laws, federal pre-emption, federal securities, foreign sovereign immunity, fraud, global warming, insurance, invasion of privacy, legal ethics, partition of real estate, patent, personal jurisdiction/inconvenient forum, products liability, public records, punitive damages, reporters’ privilege, right of publicity, separation of powers, statutory interpretation, tax, telephone regulation, television access to courtrooms, trademarks, trusts and estates, unfair competition, unsolicited faxes, wage and hour disputes, and wrongful termination.

Mr. Heinke has served as lead trial and appellate counsel on behalf of newspapers, magazines, television networks, motion picture studios, websites, and entertainment production and distribution companies in First Amendment, intellectual property, entertainment, media, and Internet disputes. He has lectured on media, entertainment, Internet, intellectual property, advertising, constitutional, and appellate law for programs presented by many professional and educational organizations. He has also written numerous articles on these issues and is the author of Media Law (BNA).
Representative Matters

Represented Brinker International, one of the world’s leading casual dining restaurant companies, in a wage-and-hour class action. In a long-anticipated ruling that resolved the legal standards to be applied to California meal period and rest break class actions, the California Supreme Court ruled that employers must relieve workers of their duties during meal breaks but are not obligated to ensure that employees do no work during breaks, and that employers are not required to schedule the breaks at five-hour intervals. For more information about this landmark case, see here.
Represented a large retail company in the New York Court of Appeals and the Second Circuit on claims challenging tipping policies; obtained summary judgment on all claims.
Represented a large accounting firm in a successful Second Circuit dismissal of class action claims and order compelling arbitration of the plaintiff’s individual claims in a lawsuit challenging a large accounting firm’s classification of junior accountants as exempt from overtime.
Represented a major grocery chain in a putative wage and hour class action; the Ninth Circuit reversed an order remanding the case to state court on account of defendants’ alleged failure to prove to a legal certainty that the claims satisfied the $5 million jurisdictional threshold of the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), and holding that the preponderance of evidence test, not the legal certainty test, was applicable; and remanded to the district court to determine whether, under the preponderance of the evidence test, the amount in controversy exceeded CAFA’s jurisdictional minimum.
Represented a major insurance company in the California Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit securing rulings that there was no insurance coverage because no claim for disparagement was pled.

Community Involvement

Mr. Heinke is involved in numerous community, civic and charitable activities that include being on the Board of Directors of:

Bet Tzedek
Children’s Law Center
Center for Civic Mediation

Mr. Heinke has been president of the:

Los Angeles County Bar Association
Chancery Club
Los Angeles County Bar Foundation
Los Angeles Copyright Society
Public Counsel

Mr. Heinke has been a member of the:

California Judicial Council
California State Bar Board of Governors
Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles
California State Bar’s Advisory Committee
California State Bar’s Task Force on Judicial Nominees and Evaluation Committee
California Supreme Court’s Task Force on Multi-Jurisdictional Practice

Awards & Accolades

recognized by Who’s Who Legal 100 in Management labor and employment in 2014
recognized as “The Top 10” from Southern California Super Lawyers magazine’s 2014 “Top 100” list of Southern California lawyers
recognized by The Best Lawyers in America for Appellate Practice, Litigation – First Amendment and Media Law from 2013 through 2015 and listed in The Best Lawyers in America since 1991
recognized by Super LawyersBusiness Edition in Litigation, Appellate in 2013
recipient of one of California Lawyer magazine’s 2013 and 2009 California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year (CLAY) Awards
included in Daily Journal “Top Verdicts” of 2012 for “Top Appellate Reversal”
ranked in 2014, 2013 and 2012 Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of Litigation: Appellate