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Employment Law and Litigation
Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP Employment Law and Litigation attorneys pride themselves on listening to each client’s unique concerns to solve labor and employment problems before they become costly disputes. If litigation proves necessary, however, our attorneys are second to none in planning and executing aggressive, cost-effective strategies that will succeed in court, arbitration, or mediation. We provide management with preventive counseling that minimizes legal risk, create effective and enforceable employment agreements and personnel policies, conduct or guide internal investigations of harassment complaints and other employee misconduct, defend individual and class actions raising such claims as discrimination, retaliation, or a failure to provide overtime pay or other benefits, and protect employers against employee misappropriation of trade secrets or violations of non-compete agreements. Our clients range in size from Fortune 500 companies to small start-up businesses, and include employers in manufacturing, finance, technology, entertainment, publishing, distribution, food service, health care, and not-for-profit.
Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP Employment Law and Litigation attorneys pride themselves on listening to each client’s unique concerns to solve labor and employment problems before they become costly disputes. If litigation proves necessary, however, our attorneys are second to none in planning and executing aggressive, cost-effective strategies that will succeed in court, arbitration, or mediation. We provide management with preventive counseling that minimizes legal risk, create effective and enforceable employment agreements and personnel policies, conduct or guide internal investigations of harassment complaints and other employee misconduct, defend individual and class actions raising such claims as discrimination, retaliation, or a failure to provide overtime pay or other benefits, and protect employers against employee misappropriation of trade secrets or violations of non-compete agreements. Our clients range in size from Fortune 500 companies to small start-up businesses, and include employers in manufacturing, finance, technology, entertainment, publishing, distribution, food service, health care, and not-for-profit.
Employment Litigation
Our attorneys successfully represent employers before federal and state judges, juries, and agencies throughout the country in every type of labor and employment litigation, including individual and class action discrimination and harassment clams; lawsuits alleging wrongful termination, retaliatory discharge, defamation, breach of contract, and violations of plant closing laws; investigations before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and state and local EEO agencies; the prosecution and defense of attempts to obtain injunctions to enforce confidentiality agreements and covenants not to compete; wage and hour litigation and agency investigations, including overtime pay class actions; defense of unfair labor practice claims at the National Labor Relations Board; and representation of federal contractors in OFCCP affirmative action compliance reviews.
Employment Practices Counseling
We focus on helping clients achieve their business goals while minimizing risk. Our attorney provide practical advice on matters such as effectively dealing with employee performance problems; employee terminations and reductions in force, including severance pay plans and release agreements; navigating the harassment minefield, including policies and training that both minimize misconduct and provide a strong defense to legal claims; developing effective policies in areas such as drug testing, electronic monitoring, whistleblowing, and leaves of absence; and drafting, negotiating, and enforcing employment agreements and restrictive covenants.
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
Because employers must contend with an increasingly litigious workforce, our attorneys have developed effective new ways to handle such disputes that promote equitable results and minimize legal expense. We help clients developed valid and effective arbitration and mediation agreements and procedures to avoid costly litigation, and provide focused, effective representation in both arbitration and mediation.
Business Transition Counseling
We offer invaluable counseling during any business transition, including plant closings, general reductions in force, focused downsizing, and sophisticated corporate deals. Our attorneys structure enforceable exit incentive programs and separation agreements and releases, help ensure compliance with WARN Act and state plant closing laws, and advise parties involved in mergers and acquisitions with regard to potential employment liabilities and collective bargaining obligations.
Union Relations
Our labor lawyers offer experienced representation in all aspects of union-management relations. We help clients maintain union-free workplaces by helping them lawfully avoid and defeat union organizing efforts. For clients who have a union, we negotiate collective bargaining agreements, defend unfair labor practice proceedings before the National Labor Relations Board, represent management at arbitration, and provide practical advice on how to prepare for and end strikes, picketing, and secondary boycotts.
Workplace Investigations
We regularly investigate suspected employee misconduct or guide management in conducting its own investigation to maximize efficiency and minimize legal risk. Our attorneys have extensive experience investigating or guiding investigations of sexual harassment complaints and other claims of workplace discrimination or retaliation; conducting full-scale investigation or discrete inquiries into suspected wrongdoing by corporate officers and their subordinates concerning fraud or breach of fiduciary duties; and preparing effective compliance programs that require employees to acknowledge and adhere to their legal and ethical obligations.
Management Training
Our lawyers are committed to the philosophy that excellent client representation requires attentive, ongoing counseling on how to prevent employment problems. Toward that end, we help clients conduct in-house training programs and seminars for managers on sexual harassment, reasonable accommodation of disabled workers, and how to achieve business goals while reducing legal risk. We also keep our clients up-to-date on new laws and court decisions through client advisories and “roundtables.”
Professionals
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Chicago
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New York
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New York
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Charlotte
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New York
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New York
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Chicago
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Chicago
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Los Angeles - Century City
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New York
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Los Angeles - Century City
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Chicago
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August 11, 2010
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March 23, 2010
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March 15, 2010
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March 10, 2010
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July 7, 2009
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June 12, 2009
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March 11, 2009
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February 27, 2009
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January 26, 2009
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November 25, 2008
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October 9, 2008
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October 6, 2008
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June 13, 2008
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February 2008
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October 2006
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June 2006
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February 2006
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January 2006
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March 2005
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Mar 2005
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January 2005
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December 2004
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August 2004
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July 30, 2004
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July 2004
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After a series of lengthy, hard-fought bargaining sessions, we helped the Joffrey Ballet reach a collective bargaining agreement
with the union that represents its artists, which includes valuable provisions addressing such key issues as control of health care costs and improved flexibility in performance venues.
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As part of our due diligence for the acquisition of a national distributor, we identified management and policy problems underlying pending discrimination claims.
After implementing our recommendations, our client received no similar claims.
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In a case in which our client had terminated an employee who sought to return to work after an indefinite absence that had lasted nearly five months,
raising difficult issues about the extent of an employer’s duty of reasonable accommodation, we secured a complete victory for our client without the need for a trial.
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In a case involving the protection of our client’s trade secrets and customers,
we successfully obtained an injunction against a former executive and the competing company he joined. Despite the absence of any restrictive covenant agreement, we persuaded a federal judge that the executive, with the approval of his prospective employer, breached his fiduciary duties to the company, thereby entitling the company to a preliminary injunction prohibiting the executive and his employer, as well as anyone acting on their behalf, from soliciting or doing business with several of our client’s customers during a critical period.
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In a suit brought by our client’s former human resources manager, alleging sex discrimination and retaliatory discharge, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed our success in obtaining summary judgment from the lower court.
The court of appeals endorsed our position that alleged sexist comments by the decision-maker did not create an issue of fact requiring a trial.
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Our Atlanta-based client, which refers physicians for temporary fill-in positions (“locum tenens coverage”) or for permanent positions with health care facilities, clinics,
and medical practice groups, was initially determined to be the employer of such physicians and thus liable for unemployment insurance contributions, by the State of New York. We immediately appealed that determination, which could have required the client to also cover physicians for unemployment insurance, workers compensation, and disability insurance coverage in several states. We persuaded the New York Department of Labor to reverse its initial determination to find that the physicians were independent contractors, not employees, relieving our client from any responsibility for making contributions for such coverages.
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Our employment attorneys persuaded a federal judge to dismiss all claims filed against a boutique trading firm by its former general counsel,
who alleged that the firm breached an oral agreement by failing to deliver a sizable year-end bonus and stock options, and that it fraudulently induced him to accept employment by misrepresenting its financial condition and business plan. The judge accepted in full our arguments that the firm’s alleged statements did not constitute an enforceable agreement, that it did not have the requisite intent to defraud the plaintiff, and that the plaintiff waived his claim by remaining employed with the firm for several months after the alleged fraud had occurred.
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Our employment attorneys represented a major Chicago-area hospital and two of its senior administrators in a $6 million suit filed by a pathologist claiming retaliatory discharge,
breach of contract, defamation, and violations of ERISA and the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act. The court granted summary judgment to our clients on all counts, ruling that the hospital did not breach its by-laws by terminating the pathologist’s services before ending his medical staff privileges. The court also rejected the physician’s retaliatory discharge and defamation claims, broadly applying the immunity provisions of the Illinois Hospital Licensing Act and the Illinois Medical Studies Act. The decision strengthens the ability of health care providers to make medical staffing decisions that cannot later be second-guessed by a judge or jury.
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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) brought a disparate impact pregnancy discrimination suit against a major Chicago hospital
on behalf of all pregnant applicants and first-year employees who had been rejected or terminated by the hospital over the course of more than 10 years. Through our aggressive defense, we obtained a highly favorable settlement that involved a small payment to only one former employee.
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The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the summary judgment we obtained in a federal age discrimination case brought by a senior high-level executive in the television industry,
accepting our position that comments the plaintiff's manager made shortly before terminating the plaintiff, in which he adversely referred to aging employees, were irrelevant.
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We obtained summary judgment in favor of a not-for-profit facility that cares for developmentally disabled children and adults,
and on behalf of two of its managers, on all seven counts of a former employee's complaint. The plaintiff, represented by a major Chicago law firm, alleged that the defendants had discriminated against her based on race as well as an actual or perceived disability, retaliated against her for opposing discrimination, and violated the Family and Medical Leave Act by not permitting her to take intermittent leave for a medical condition.
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We obtained summary judgment victory on behalf of a Midwest manufacturing company in an age and disability discrimination suit in federal court.
The plaintiff, formerly employed as the company's national sales engineer, claimed that he had been discharged because he was age 57 and had childhood polio. The court granted our motion for summary judgment, ruling that the plaintiff failed to prove he was disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and could not establish a prima facie case under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act
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We performed an audit of a technology company and discovered several job groups were misclassified as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Working with the company’s general counsel and human resource officer, we helped our client restructure its compensation system for these employees to achieve compliance with the law and avoid costly litigation and potential liability.
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We represented a Chicago-based money management holding company in an action brought against a former principal of a subsidiary firm who resigned and started a competing business,
soliciting clients and employees of her former firm, and improperly utilizing its confidential and proprietary information. We were able to stop the former principal’s improper conduct and unfair competition without the need for extended litigation.
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We represented a company that operates a national chain of senior assisted living facilities in its dealings with a union that represented employees at one such facility.
After lengthy negotiations with the union, the parties signed a collective bargaining agreement. Shortly before that agreement expired, the employees’ dissatisfaction with the agreement and the union culminated in a petition to decertify the union. With our guidance, the decertification petition resulted in an election at the National Labor Relations Board in which the employees overwhelmingly rejected continued representation by the union.
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We represented a distributor of alcoholic beverages that abruptly terminated operations and laid off all of its employees when its primary supplier terminated its agreement with our client.
The union representing the employees claimed that our client had violated the WARN Act, the federal statute requiring 60 days advance notice of a plant closing. After a two-day hearing, an arbitrator concluded that our client had demonstrated that it fell within the “unforseeable business circumstances” under the WARN Act and dismissed the union’s claim.
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We represented the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, an association of the largest taxicab fleets in New York City,
in its collective bargaining negotiations with the union that had represented the drivers for many years. During a particularly difficult session, we took the position that the drivers were not entitled to union representation, and we would no longer bargain with the union, because the drivers were independent contractors rather than employees. The union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board. After a three-day trial, we prevailed in full, with the Board finding that the drivers were in fact independent contractors.
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We successfully defended a $4 million class action brought by 350 former employees who alleged violations of the federal plant closing law (WARN Act) and state wage payment law.
After persuading the plaintiffs to drop their state law claims and defeating their repeated efforts to expand the class, we obtained summary judgment. Despite the employer’s failure to provide any advance notice of its plant closing, we prevailed by showing that its decision to close the plant was due to unforeseeable business circumstances.
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We successfully represented a major manufacturer in a precedent-setting case addressing an employer’s liability for sexual harassment by its supervisors.
We first obtained summary judgment from the federal district court in Chicago, which dismissed not only the sexual harassment claim but also plaintiff’s additional claims of retaliation under Title VII and intentional infliction of emotional distress under state law. The plaintiff’s appeal was consolidated with another sexual harassment case (Ellerth v. Burlington Industries) and heard en banc by the Seventh Circuit to resolve the standards governing company liability for a supervisor’s sexual harassment. In a remarkable 203-page decision, affirming in part and reversing in part the district court’s judgment, the appeals court laid the groundwork for U.S. Supreme Court review of this important issue We successfully secured a very favorable settlement for our client, while the companion case proceeded to the Supreme Court.
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We sued several former employees of our client who left to form a competing business.
Even though none of them had signed a non-compete or confidentiality agreement, we succeeded in obtaining a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the former employees by showing that they had stolen company property, breached their fiduciary duties, and misappropriated trade secrets. Within weeks of bringing suit, we had secured a full victory for our client.
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Where an employee claimed that her supervisor’s repeated sexual harassment had forced her to resign, we persuaded the court that application of recent Supreme Court decisions warranted
summary judgment because the alleged harasser did not take a tangible job action against the employee, because the employee failed to report the activity immediately, and because the employer took prompt remedial action once it became aware of the alleged problem.
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