Shaun Markley is a partner at Nicholas & Tomasevic, LLP, where his practice is devoted to complex litigation primarily relating to employment, consumer, and intellectual property matters. Shaun spends much of his time fighting for working people and consumers in California and across the country in class, collective, and representative actions. Workers designated under “independent contractor” or similar labels frequently rely on Shaun and the team at Nicholas & Tomasevic to fight for their rights. The firm has secured some of the best results in the State in recent years in independent contractor and gig economy cases often dedicating countless hours over many years to see these results come to fruition.

A significant part of Shaun’s practice involves briefing and arguing before the courts of appeals — frequently defending trial-court wins where companies have tried to minimize their liability by forcing workers out of court and into individual arbitration. His notable appellate matters include:

• Munoz v. Earthgrains Distribution, LLC (9th Cir. 2024) — Successfully defended a District Court ruling that a national baking company’s arbitration agreement with its distributor-drivers was both procedurally and substantively unconscionable, keeping these workers’ misclassification and wage claims in court.
• Brock v. Flowers Foods, Inc. (10th Cir. 2024) — Successfully established that delivery drivers classified as independent contractors fell within the Federal Arbitration Act’s “transportation workers” exemption, even though their routes were entirely intrastate, because their deliveries formed part of the continuous interstate flow of goods.
• Seneca v. Homeaglow Inc. (9th Cir. 2025) — Successfully defended a ruling that a home-services platform’s online terms and conditions failed to give consumers reasonably conspicuous notice of arbitration and class-waiver provisions, preserving consumers’ right to proceed on a class-wide basis.
• B&G Foods North America, Inc. v. Embry (9th Cir. 2022) — Argued and won affirmance of the dismissal of a food manufacturer’s retaliatory lawsuit against a consumer and her counsel on the ground that their consumer enforcement efforts were protected petitioning activity under the Noerr-Pennington doctrine.

Shaun’s work in Brock also helped lay the groundwork for the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2026 decision in Flowers Foods, Inc. v. Brock. Along with their co-counsel, Nicholas & Tomasevic represented Mr. Brock throughout the proceedings and built the record on which the Supreme Court went on to decide unanimously that transportation workers can qualify for the Federal Arbitration Act’s exemption even when they play only an in-state, last-mile role. That decision is now a leading precedent on the scope of arbitration exemptions for transportation workers nationwide and lays the framework for many workers to remain in court to fight for their rights at scale.

Shaun is admitted to practice before all California courts, all District Courts in California, the First, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits as well as the US Supreme Court.

Shaun earned his J.D. from The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law and his B.A. in Political Science and Criminology, Law, and Society from the University of California, Irvine.