Business

With strike behind them, Los Angeles hotels look to move on

Published

1 year ago

August 22, 2024

With strike behind them, Los Angeles hotels look to move on

On a spring day last year, representatives from dozens of Los Angeles-area hotels gathered for a meeting with the union representing their cleaners, front desk clerks and other workers.

The workers’ contracts with the hotels had expired and leaders from Unite Here Local 11 laid out a stark proposal for new agreements, which included an immediate $5 an hour raise for its members.

It was a nonstarter for the hotel owners and operators — so much so they refused to send their negotiators to the next bargaining session. Weeks of tense negotiations followed and when talks broke down, Unite Here launched a strike thought to be the largest ever to hit the U.S. hotel industry.

The strike’s intermittent work stoppages, which had staff at more than 60 hotels walking off the job, would go on for more than a year. Workers in red shirts sporting drums and horns became a fixture outside of Los Angeles hotels. Picket lines were tumultuous at times and the disruption riled hotel guests, who lashed out at workers.

But now calm has returned. All but a few of the hotels involved in the strike have agreed to new contracts, conceding on the wage increases that had kicked off the strike as well as other demands made by Unite Here. In all, workers are set to receive a total hourly boost of $10 over the course of the four-year contracts.

While the labor unrest roiled a keystone of Southern California’s tourism industry and the new contracts have added to the hotels’ labor costs, hospitality experts said the strike isn’t expected to have a lasting impact on the region’s hotel industry. Hotels have emerged largely unscathed as demand for rooms in the region is healthy and revenue for the hotels climb.

“Right now people have been traveling and I would say hotels are doing well,” said Ed Fuller, a hotel and lodging industry veteran who previously served as Marriott International’s president and now runs an Irvine-based consulting group.

With the strike out of the way, Fuller said the hotel and broader tourism industry should be focused on boosting the number of international tourists back to pre-pandemic levels and “having the commitment that Los Angeles — and Orange County, and San Francisco and the whole state — is selling at all times.”

Upscale hotels in thriving coastal markets, which typically have unionized workforces, are doing relatively well, said Ryan Kawai Sanchez, an associate with real estate firm Matthews.

In particular, occupancy rates at hotels in Los Angeles County averaged more than 70% over the last 12 months, putting the region above the national average of 62.7%, according to data released by the travel industry nonprofit Visit California. The same is true for Orange County.

But not all hotels in the L.A. region are thriving, and location can be a deciding factor. Occupancy rates at the Glendale Hilton, for example, are hovering around 50%, said Travis Gemoets, an attorney at Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Mitchell, which represents the property. Glendale, Pasadena and other more out-of-the-way areas don’t offer the same draw as more desirable and conveniently located areas such as downtown L.A. and near Los Angeles International Airport.

“It’s just a different market,” Gemoets said.

It was those differences in performance, Gemoets said, that led the Glendale Hilton’s owners to be reluctant to make a deal with Unite Here, since the increased wages the union was demanding would hit the hotel harder than more prosperous properties. The hotel eventually agreed to the wage increase last month, after other hotels in the area reached tentative agreements.

Workers took to the picket line at the Hilton Pasadena in December.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

“We want labor peace and that’s why we agreed,” Gemoets said.

Union leaders have said they try to extract greater concessions from hotels that prolong negotiations. For instance, in its agreement with Hotel Figueroa, announced last week, the union won an extra dollar raise for non-tipped workers, amounting to a total hourly boost of $11 over the course of the contract, as well as an extra $1 per hour contribution to workers’ pensions. In its deal with the Glendale Hilton, the union secured additional hours for culinary workers and higher pay for tipped workers.

Hotels — whether unionized or not — are battling higher labor costs due to ripple effects from fast-food minimum wage legislation and rising insurance premiums, as multiple insurance providers have abandoned the California market, experts said.

Motels and lower-tier hotels, particularly in California’s rural areas or regions generally with less foot traffic than touristy coastal areas, are lagging behind, Sanchez said. Overall, hotels in the state haven’t completely recovered to pre-pandemic occupancy levels, he said.

“We are really only seeing that year-over-year growth in the luxury sector, and that’s largely due to higher-end customers not being as affected by inflationary pressures as the overall population,” Sanchez said.

Still, “hotels are in pretty darn good shape overall,” said Carl Winston, a professor and director of the hospitality and tourism management program at San Diego State.

Hotel businesses can — and do — pass along added costs to customers, by upping their prices, Winston said. Hotel room rates have gone up dramatically, far exceeding inflation, because it’s the “only thing they can grow.”

“If hotels have a cost increase, they can pass it along to the consumer tomorrow,” Winston said. Hotels change their prices every damn day.”

He said the wage increases built into the new labor agreements are far less of an issue for most major hotels than the debt many of them have taken on, primarily from mortgages with unfavorable interest rates, construction loans and commitments to investors.

“There’s a sense of resignation when it comes to organized labor. It’s almost like, ‘OK, we don’t want them, but they aren’t our biggest threat,’” Winston said. “If you go to hotel boardrooms today, they aren’t talking about wages as an existential threat, it’s the cost of debt they are talking about.”

The lodging industry typically evaluates its health based on two main metrics: occupancy rates and average daily rates.

After rising steeply the last few years, hotel prices in the U.S. this year have remained mostly flat compared with the same time last year, according to data released in April by online booking site Hopper. Higher prices allow businesses to draw in more revenue, but also run the risk of driving away customers.

The median nightly rate for hotels in California this year is $206, a 6% decrease in cost compared with last year’s median of $220, according to data from Kayak. In June, the state’s average daily rate was $192.16, down 0.7% year over year, according to Visit California.

An apparent spike in prices for hotel rooms, Airbnb and other short-term options may show up for California visitors in the coming months, due to a new California law aimed at bringing transparency to resort fees, service fees and hidden prices that jack up a consumer’s bill.

Under the law, businesses must include mandatory fees in their initial advertised prices. Lynn Mohrfeld, president and chief executive of the California Hotel and Lodging Assn., said the group supported the legislation in Sacramento because it should bring “a level playing field” between hotels and the vacation rentals.

“If everybody does it the same way, it makes it a better buying experience for the consumer,” she told The Times earlier this year.

Dealing with the hard numbers of pricing and occupancy rates are a welcome return to normal for hotel owners after the upheaval of the strike.

Unite Here deployed a combination of disruptive tactics — noisy picketing in the early morning, surprise work stoppages, marches through hotel lobbies — that helped put pressure on hotels, said union leaders and hotel industry experts in interviews.

“Hotels were like, ‘This is crazy,’” Bill Doak, of Westwood-based real estate investment firm Stockdale Capital Partners, said of Unite Here Local 11’s demands. Doak’s firm owns the Sandbourne, a Santa Monica hotel that reached a tentative agreement with the union last November. “It was the union’s tactic to make sure hotel owners felt the pain,” Doak said.

Hotels put together contingency staffing plans and told guests they expected to be able to serve them largely without interruption. That proved a difficult task at times.

When workers walked out during the busy Fourth of July weekend, people visiting Disneyland, the Anime Expo downtown and the L.A. leg of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour were greeted outside their hotels by picketing workers banging on drums and blowing vuvuzela horns — of which the union has purchased hundreds.

In online reviews, guests vented frustrations with both hotel management and picketing workers. “If you want to have a peaceful vacation, choose another location,” wrote a tourist who stayed at 1 Hotel West Hollywood in August.

Early on, managers at some hotels realized that the delivery of portable toilets signaled the union’s plans to carry out a work stoppage and protest in front of the property, said Kurt Petersen, Unite Here Local 11 co-president. To confuse them, the union sent toilets to hotels at random.

In January, Unite Here Local 11 organizers took stock of the dozens of hotels that had not yet agreed to new contracts and noticed about 80% were owned by private equity firms or operated by companies owned by such firms.

The union then made more concerted efforts to target companies such as Aimbridge and Blackstone with work stoppages and ramped up efforts to reach out to public pension funds invested in the private equity firms.

“Are those tactics working? Are they getting owners and managers to come to the table? I think the proof is in the results. They are winning right now,” Winston said.

Business

Video: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

Published

3 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

Video: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

new video loaded: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

Our reporter, Emily Steel, found that in many states, Uber’s guidelines allow people with serious criminal convictions to drive, as long as those convictions are more than seven years old. Some of those drivers have gone on to sexually assault or harass passengers.

By Emily Steel, Christina Shaman, Zach Caldwell, David Jouppi and Thomas Trudeau

December 22, 2025

Business

How private investors stand to profit from billions in L.A. County sex abuse settlements

Published

4 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

How private investors stand to profit from billions in L.A. County sex abuse settlements

Walking out of a Skid Row market, Harold Cook, 42, decides to play a game.

How long after opening YouTube will it take for him to see an ad asking him to join the latest wave of sex abuse litigation against Los Angeles County?

“I can literally turn my phone on right now, something’s going to pop up,” said Cook, opening the app.

Within a few seconds, a message blares: “They thought you’d never speak up. They figured you was too young, too scared, too Black, too brown, too alone. … L.A. County already had to cough up $4 billion to settle these cases. So why not you?”

Since the historic April payout to resolve thousands of claims of sex abuse in county-run facilities, law firms have saturated L.A.’s airwaves and social media with campaigns seeking new clients. For months, government officials have quietly questioned who is financing the wall-to-wall marketing blitz.

The ad Cook heard was from Sheldon Law Group, one of several law firms active in sex abuse litigation in California that receive backing from private investors, according to loan notices and SEC filings. The investors, which often operate through Delaware companies, expect to profit from the payouts to resolve the cases.

Sheldon, based in Washington, D.C., has been one of the most prolific L.A. advertisers. The firm has already gathered roughly 2,500 potential clients, according to a list submitted to the county. The lawsuits started being filed this summer, raising the prospect of another costly settlement squeezed out of a government on the brink of a fiscal crisis.

“We act in the best interests of our clients, who are victims in every sense of the word and have suffered real and quite dreadful injuries,” a spokesperson for Sheldon Law Group said in a statement. “Without financial and legal support, these victims would be unable to hold the responsible parties, powerful corporate or governmental defendants, accountable.”

The financing deals have raised alarms among lawmakers, who say they want to know what portion of the billions poised to be diverted from government services to victims of horrific sex abuse will go to opaque private investors.

Kathryn Barger, a member of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, said she was contacted by a litigation investor who sought to gauge whether sex abuse litigation could be a smart venture. “This is so predatory,” Barger told The Times.

(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)

“I’m getting calls from the East Coast asking me if people should invest in bankrupting L.A. County,” Supervisor Kathryn Barger said. “I understand people want to make money, but I feel like this is so predatory.”

Barger said an old college friend who invests in lawsuits reached out this spring attempting to gauge whether L.A. County sex abuse litigation could be a smart venture. Barger said the caller referred to the lawsuits as an “evergreen” investment.

“That means it keeps on giving,” she said. “There’s no end to it.”

The county has spent nearly $5 billion this year on sex abuse litigation, with the bulk of that total coming from the $4-billion deal this spring — the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history.

The April settlement is under investigation by the L.A. County district attorney office following Times reporting that found plaintiffs who said they were paid by recruiters to join the litigation, including some who said they filed fraudulent claims. All were represented by Downtown LA Law Group, which handled roughly 2,700 plaintiffs.

Downtown LA Law Group has denied all wrongdoing and said it “only wants justice for real victims.” The firm took out a bank loan in summer 2024, according to a financing statement, but a spokesperson said they had no investor financing.

Lawyers who take the private financing say it’s a win-win. Investors make money on high-interest rate loans while smaller law firms have the capital they need to take on deep-pocketed corporations and governments. If people were victimized by predators on the county’s payroll, they deserve to have a law firm that can afford to work for free until the case settles. Money for investors, they emphasize, comes out of their cut — not the clients’.

But critics say the flow of outside money incentivizes law firms to amass as many plaintiffs as possible for the wrong reasons — not to spread access to justice, but rather ensure hefty profit for themselves and their financial backers.

“The amount of money being generated by private equity in these situations — that’s absurd,” said former state lawmaker Lorena Gonzalez, who wrote the 2019 bill that opened the floodgate for older sex abuse claims to be filed. “Nobody should be getting wealthy off taxpayer dollars.”

For residents of L.A.’s poorest neighborhood, ads touting life-changing payouts have started to feel inescapable.

Waiting in line at a Skid Row food shelter, William Alexander, 27, said his YouTube streaming is punctuated by commercials featuring a robotic man he suspects is AI calling on him to sue the county over sex abuse.

Across the street, Shane Honey, 56, said nearly every commercial break on the news seems to feature someone asking if he was neglected at a juvenile hall.

In many of the ads, the same name pops up: Sheldon Law Group.

Austin Trapp says the ads recruiting plaintiffs for sex abuse cases in California are all over his Instagram feed.

Sheldon’s website lists no attorneys, but claims the firm is the “architect” behind “some of the largest litigations on Earth.” They list their headquarters online at a D.C. virtual office space, though the owners on their most recent business filing list their own addresses in New York. The firm’s name appears on websites hunting for people suffering from video game addiction, exposure to toxins from 9/11, and toe implant failure.

Sheldon Law Group was started by the founder of Legal Recovery Associates, a New York litigation funding company that uses money from investors including hedge funds to recruit large numbers of plaintiffs for “mass torts,” cases where many people are suing over the same problem, according to interviews with former advisers, court records and business filings.

Those clients are gathered for one of their affiliated law firms, including Sheldon Law Group, according to two people involved in past transactions.

Ron Lasorsa, a former Wall Street investment banker who said he advised Legal Recovery Associates on setting up the affiliate law firms, told The Times it was built to make investors “obscenely rich.”

“It’s extremely profitable for people who know what the hell they’re doing,” Lasorsa said.

The idea, he says, emerged from a pool cabana at a Las Vegas legal conference called Mass Torts Made Perfect in fall 2015.

Lasorsa had just amassed 14,000 clients for personal injury lawsuits in one year using methods that, he now says, were legally dubious. A favorite at the time: using call centers in India that had access to Americans’ hospital records and phoning the patients to see if they were feeling litigious.

Near the pool at a Vegas hotel, Lasorsa said Howard Berger, a former hedge fund manager barred by the SEC from working as a broker, asked if he could turbocharge the caseload of Legal Recovery Associates, where he worked as a consultant.

Lasorsa said he soon teamed up with the founders of LRA — Gary Podell, a real estate developer, and Greg Goldberg, a former investment manager — to create “shell” law firms based in Washington. The nation’s capital is one of the few places where non-lawyers can own a law firm, profiting directly from case proceeds.

Goldberg, who is not licensed to practice law in D.C., would become a partner in at least six D.C. law firms including Sheldon Law Group by 2017, according to a contract between Legal Recovery Associates and a hedge fund that financed the firms’ cases.

Sheldon, which said it was responding on behalf of Podell, said in a statement that all their partners are lawyers, though declined to name them. Goldberg did not respond to a repeated request for comment.

The Sheldon spokesperson said Legal Recovery Associates is a separate entity that engages in its “own business and legal activities.”

Investors typically make money on litigation by providing law firms with loans, which experts say carry interest rates as high as 30%, representing the risk involved. If the case goes south, investors get nothing. If it settles, they make it all back — and then some.

Lasorsa said he helped the company gather 20,000 claims using the same Indian call centers before a bitter 2019 split. He later accused the owners of unethical behavior, which led to a half-million dollar settlement and a non-disparagement agreement that he said he decided to breach, leading to a roughly $600,000 penalty he has yet to pay, according to a court judgment.

Lasorsa was also ordered to delete any disparaging statements he’d made, according to the judgment.

D.C. law firms with non-lawyers as partners must have the “sole purpose” of providing “legal services,” according to the district’s bar. Some attorneys have argued no such service was provided by the firms associated with Legal Recovery Associates.

Troy Brenes, an Orange County attorney who co-counseled with one of the firms over flawed medical devices, accused the company of operating a “sham law firm” as part of a 2022 court battle over fees.

“The sole purpose … appears to have been to allow non-lawyers to market for product liability cases and then refer those cases to legitimate law firms in exchange for a portion of the attorney fees without making any effort to comply with the D.C. ethics rules,” Brenes wrote.

A spokesperson for Sheldon and LRA noted in a statement that “no court or arbitration panel has ever concluded” that its business structure violates the law.

In the medical device cases, the affiliate firm, which was responsible for funding the marketing campaign, took 55% of recoverable attorney fees, according to an agreement between the two firms. The profit divide mirrors the 55/45 breakdown between Sheldon Law Group and James Harris Law, a two-person Seattle firm they have partnered with on the L.A. County sex abuse cases, according to a retainer agreement reviewed by The Times.

This summer, ads linking to a webpage with the name of James Harris appeared online, telling potential clients they could qualify in 30 seconds for up to $1 million. When a Times reporter entered a cell-phone number on one of the ads, a representative who said they worked for the firm’s intake department called dozens of times.

After The Times described these marketing efforts in a story, Harris emphasized in an email that he did not know about the ads or the persistent calls and said they were done by his “referring firm.” The landing page the ads led to was replaced with the name of Sheldon Law Group.

Harris said his firm and Sheldon, which he described as “functioning as a genuine and independent co counsel law firm,” have “been highly selective and have only prosecuted cases that we believe are legally and factually meritorious.”

“I continue to believe that lawyer advertising, when conducted ethically and without misleading claims, serves as a vital tool for raising public awareness about legal rights and available recourse, particularly for survivors of abuse seeking justice,” he said.

Over the last five years, experts say, the practice of funding big mass tort cases has boomed in the U.S.

Of the five main firms in L.A. County’s initial $4-billion sex abuse settlement, two took money from outside investors shortly before they began suing the county, according to public loan filings.

The loans to both Herman Law, a Florida-based firm that specializes in sex abuse cases, and Slater Slater Schuman, a New York-based personal injury firm, came from Delaware-registered companies. Deer Finance, a New York City litigation funding firm that connects investors with lawyers, is listed on business records for both companies.

The loan documents do not specify which of the firms’ cases were funded, but show each deal was finalized within months of the firms starting to sue L.A. County for sex abuse. Neither firm responded to questions about how the outside funding was used.

Slater, which received the loan in spring 2022, represents more L.A. County plaintiffs than any other firm, by far.

Slater’s caseload surged after the county signaled its plan to settle for $4 billion in October 2024. Several of the main attorneys on the case told The Times they stopped advertising at that point, reasoning that any new plaintiffs would now mean less money for the existing ones.

The next month, Slater Slater Schulman ran more than 700 radio ads in Los Angeles seeking juvenile detention abuse claims, according to X Ante, a company that tracks mass tort advertisements.

By this summer, the number of claims jumped from roughly 2,100 to 3,700, according to court records, catapulting Slater far beyond the caseload of any other firm.

Stacked bar chart showing how many plaintiffs were added by each firm before or after Oct. 2024.

This fall, another Delaware-registered company took out a lien on all of Slater’s attorney fees from the county cases, according to an Oct. 6 loan record. The law firm assisting with the transaction declined to comment.

“These are extraordinarily complex cases and litigating these cases effectively requires resources,” said an outside attorney representing Slater in a statement, responding to questions from The Times.

The firm, which also represents roughly 14,000 victims in the Boy Scouts sex abuse cases, was singled out by the judge overseeing the litigation this fall for “procedural and factual problems” among its plaintiffs. The firm was one of several called out by insurers in the litigation for using hedge fund money to “run up the claim number.”

The firm has said they’re working “tirelessly” to address the issues and justice for survivors is its top priority.

Many plaintiffs told The Times they were discouraged to see how much money stood to be made for others off their trauma.

April Mannani, 51, sued L.A. County after she said she was raped repeatedly as a teenager at MacLaren Children’s Center, a shelter now notorious for abuse. Mannani accepts that her lawyers are entitled to a cut for their work on the case, but said she was disheartened watching the numbers of cases suddenly skyrocket this year. With the district attorney investigating, a pall has been cast over the entire settlement.

“We’ve been made fools of and we were used for financial gain,” she said. “They all just see it as a money grab.”

That firm that represents her, Herman Law, has filed roughly 800 cases against L.A. County. Herman Law took out a loan in 2021 from a Delaware-registered company affiliated with Deer Finance, according to a loan notice. The firm said they use traditional bank loans for “overall operations.”

Stacked bar chart showing the number of plaintiffs by county and law firm.

Herman Law is the most prolific filer of county sex abuse cases outside of L.A. County since the state changed the statute of limitations.

Herman Law has filed about half of these roughly 800 sex abuse lawsuits that have been brought outside of L.A. County, according to data reviewed by The Times.

Herman Law has sued several tiny counties, where public officials say they’ve been inundated with advertisements on social media and TV looking for plaintiffs. Some counties say they threw out relevant records long ago and have no way to tell if the alleged victim was ever in local custody.

A judge fined Herman Law about $9,500 last month for failing to dismiss Kings County from a lawsuit despite presenting no evidence the county ever had custody of the victim, calling the claim “factually frivolous” and “objectively unreasonable.” An attorney for Herman Law said in a court filing the client believed she’d been in a foster home there, and the lack of records didn’t conclusively establish anything.

“There are not records. There’s nothing that exists,” said Jason Britt, the county administrative officer for Tulare County, which has been sued at least eight times by Herman Law. “Counties at some point are not gonna be able to operate because you’re essentially going to bankrupt them.”

The firm said its clients are always its top priority.

“No lender or financial relationship has ever influenced, directed or played any role in legal strategy, client decisions or case outcomes, including any matters involving the Los Angeles County,” the firm said. “Herman Law’s work is driven solely by our mission to advocate for survivors in their pursuit of justice and healing.”

Joseph Nicchitta, L.A. County’s acting chief executive officer, said he believed the region’s social safety net was now “an investment opportunity.” In an October letter to the State Bar, he called out the “explosive growth” of claims, arguing a handful of firms were “competing to bring as many cases as possible” to the detriment of their existing clients.

He estimated that attorney fees in the lawsuit would amount to more than $1 billion. “It begs reform,” he wrote.

Business

‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ heats up the box office, grossing $88 million domestically

Published

16 hours ago

December 21, 2025

Press Room

The Na’vi won the battle of the box office this weekend, as “Avatar: Fire and Ash” hauled in a hefty $88 million in the U.S. and Canada during its opening weekend.

The third installment of the Disney-owned 20th Century Studios’ “Avatar” franchise brought in an estimated total of $345 million globally, with about $257 million of that coming from international audiences. The movie reportedly has a budget of at least $350 million.

Box office analysts had expected a big international response to the most recent film, particularly since its predecessor “Avatar: The Way of Water” had strong showings in markets like Germany, France and China.

In China, the film opened to an estimated $57.6 million, marking the second highest 2025 opening for a U.S. film in the country since Disney’s “Zootopia 2” a few weeks ago. (That film went on to gross more than $271.7 million in China on its way to a global box office total of $1.1 billion.)

The strong response in China is another sign that certain movies can still do well in the country, which was once seen as a key force multiplier for big blockbusters and animated family films but has in recent years cooled to American movies due to geopolitics and the rise of its domestic film industry.

Angel Studio’s animated biblical tale “David” came in second at the box office this weekend, with an estimated domestic gross of $22 million. Lionsgate thriller “The Housemaid,” Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Movies’ “The Spongebob Movie: Search for Squarepants” and “Zootopia 2” rounded out the top five.

The weekend’s haul likely comes as a relief to theater owners, who have weathered a roller coaster year.

After a difficult first three months, the spring brought hits like “A Minecraft Movie” and “Sinners” before the summer ended mostly flat. A sleepy fall brought panic to the exhibition business until closer to the Thanksgiving holiday, when “Wicked: For Good” and “Zootopia 2” drew in audiences.