Systemic Employment Litigation

Our Systemic Employment Litigation team combines experience in labor and employment and employee benefits law with the talents of litigators and jury trial lawyers who practice exclusively on behalf of management in those fields. We partner with the Litigation Practice, and together bring to our clients the resources of some 700 litigators across our offices.

Our lawyers have litigated in every federal circuit, numerous state jurisdictions, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Our Systemic Employment Litigation Practice helps you balance the intense pressures that are brought to bear on any company that is targeted for a class action. We can assist with:

• Assessment of a company's risk of an employment class or collective action, including:
  • Human resources data review
  • Pay equity analysis
  • Promotion and termination analysis
  • Training and evaluation systems analysis
  • Anti-harassment and diversity training
  • Initial workforce statistical analysis
  • Advice on diversity "best practices"

• Managing and defending an employment class action, including:
  • Case assessment, development, and administration
  • Initial investigation and document collection
  • Application of technology to efficient and effective document management
  • Selection of expert witnesses
  • Management of the discovery process
  • Public relations and crisis management
  • Trial and appeal

Complex ERISA Litigation

There is little doubt that the combination of ERISA, traditional labor law, and the equal employment opportunity statutes provides fertile ground for plaintiffs. The complex interrelationships among these federal statutes are best navigated by lawyers who have substantive knowledge of the area. With skilled benefits litigators in every office who know their way around the courtroom and understand the complexities and substance of ERISA, we can assist you in navigating through these murky waters.

Our recent successes in class actions and other significant cases have involved:

• severance benefits allegedly due as a result of an asset sale
• alleged violations of anticutback rules and use of improper actuarial assumptions in the conversion of annuities to cash balances
• alleged misrepresentations and failure to disclose plans for an early retirement window
• modification of a retiree health benefit plan
• alleged interference with ERISA benefit entitlements following a plant closing
• termination of an employer’s participation in a multiemployer fund on adverse actuarial selection grounds

Our recent courtroom accomplishments include:

• Represented a large securities firm in settling a widely publicized EEOC representative action
• Defeated class certification in the single largest age discrimination class action in California
• Successfully resolved an ADEA action involving more than 250 terminated employees of a large national bank
• Successfully defended a class action alleging that a paper manufacturing company unlawfully terminated a severance plan in order to deprive employees of severance in connection with an 11,000-employee reduction in force