Blanks

I.

INTRODUCTION

In this legal-malpractice-based lawsuit, plaintiff and respondent Billy Blanks (Blanks) won a multimillion-dollar judgment against his former attorneys, defendants and appellants William H. Lancaster (Lancaster) and Seyfarth Shaw LLP (Seyfarth Shaw), jointly Seyfarth.

The issues raised require us to discuss the exclusive jurisdiction of the Labor Commissioner in cases involving the Talent Agencies Act (Lab. Code, § 1700 et seq.; the TAA or the Act) as most recently decided by the Supreme Court in Styne v. Stevens (2001) 26 Cal.4th 42 [ 109 Cal.Rptr.2d 14 , 26 P.3d 343 ] (Styne). We are also called upon to discuss the effect of Seyfarth’s failure to file a petition with the commissioner within the Act’s one-year statute of limitations (Lab. Code, § 1700.44, subd. (c)), and the doctrine of severability of contracts applied to the TAA as addressed in Marathon Entertainment, Inc. v. Blasi (2008) 42 Cal.4th 974 [ 70 Cal.Rptr.3d 727 , 174 P.3d 741 ] (Marathon).

We hold that (1) plaintiffs seeking affirmative relief under the TAA must bring their cases to the Labor Commissioner within the Act’s one-year statute of limitations and cannot rely on the longer…