Employment Litigation

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Employment Litigation

The Employment Litigation Practice Group represents employers in all aspects of employment, labor, employee benefits, and occupational injury law. Group lawyers routinely work with clients' management teams to craft forward-thinking solutions to management issues and handle adversarial matters in industries such as energy, manufacturing, education, health care, construction, and natural resources.

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The firm's broad-based employment litigation practice includes the following:

  • Employment-related counseling
  • Litigating employment-related disputes in state and federal court
  • Handling wrongful discharge cases before state and federal agencies
  • Handling both representation and unfair labor practice proceedings before the NLRB
  • Negotiating collective bargaining agreements
  • Arbitrating contractual disputes
  • Providing employee benefits advice and litigation services

Our litigators have particular experience dealing with the following:
  • Employment discrimination
  • Retaliatory discharge
  • Breach of contract Sexual harassment
  • Covenants not to compete
  • Employee benefits
  • FLSA
  • Challenging and defending arbitration awards
  • Tort theories
  • FMLA
  • Injunctions under state and federal law

 

27 Team Members

We're all in this together

Know How

Alert Wage and Hour Alert for Energy Industry
On Wednesday, November 14, 2012, Department of Labor (DOL) Investigator Diana Smargie spoke to the North Central WV Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) chapter. Smargie made a number of points during her talk, one of which she was careful to highlight. As part of its 2013 enforcement initiative, the DOL will be targeting small energy producers and oil and gas service providers.  As Smargie put it, a lot of people in the industry have come up through the ranks being paid wrong, so when they are in a position to pay employees themselves, they really do not know how to pay properly and they violate the wage and hour law.So what are the chief issues she sees?  Her top three problems:
Alert Employers’ Rights Affirmed
Following significant reforms to West Virginia’s workers’ compensation system in 2003 and 2005, insured employers benefitted from statutory changes that granted them the right to review claims in which awards of permanent total disability benefits had been made. This review process allowed insured employers to determine if workers who had been granted such awards previously remained qualified recipients of the benefits. This grant of authority from the legislature remained relatively unused since the revisions to the Workers’ Compensation Act because of a lack of interpretation from the Supreme Court of Appeals. A decision entered just this week, however, is likely to change that lack of use.

Representative Experience

  • Defended unsafe working condition claims for employers
  • Defended client in MSHA investigation and civil litigation
  • Jury trial on behalf of aircraft leasing company where plaintiff claimed constructive discharge, sexual harassment and battery claims
  • Sought summary judgment on behalf of large law firm in shareholder's discrimination retaliation action

  • Defended surface damage claims related to construction of oil and gas wells

  • Defended multi-national manufacturer in deliberate intent claim alleging repetitive stress injury

  • Defended multi-national manufacturer in deliberate intent claim arising from traumatic limb amputation

  • Defended businesses, including coal mine operators, against wrongful death, deliberate intent, and premises liability lawsuits

  • Defended owners of a metal alloys industrial plant in a "deliberate intent" case involving the alleged wrongful death of a worker in a fire

  • Defended public and private employers in complex employment cases involving claims of gender, race, and age discrimination
  • Defended public and private employers in intricate employment cases involving allegations of sexual harassment and hostile work environment
  • Defended timbering, manufacturing, and coal industry clients in deliberate intent cases involving companion claims of retaliatory discharge
  • Received no probable cause determination from Fairfax County (Virginia) Human Rights Commission in national origin discrimination claim

  • Landmark Supreme Court decision for employer in prevailing wage case - the court reversed Department of Labor opinion applying prevailing wage law to employees of state agencies

  • Represented a public entity in a disability discrimination case brought by a former firefighter with hemophilia
  • Defended a major utility in a gender discrimination case that went to trial in the Circuit Court of Kanawha County, West Virginia
  • Defended a major hospital in a disability and age-discrimination case
  • Assisted a large manufacturer through a reduction in force that impacted union and non-union employees, overseeing every aspect of the reduction from WARN Act notification to salaried employee evaluations to training managers to deliver the news to impacted employees
  • Defended employers in discrimination and workplace injury litigation in state and federal courts, and before the EEOC and the WVHRC
  • Defended employers in state court in various employment cases involving claims for discrimination, harassment and retaliatory discharge
  • Drafted post-hearing briefs on behalf of employers in various arbitration proceedings
  • Defended discrimination claims of race, gender, age, disability, religion and national origin in state and federal court, as well as claims brought before the EEOC and state human rights agencies in West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Tennessee, New York, Florida and South Carolina
  • Represented companies in deliberate intent and other workplace safety litigation
  • Defended numerous charges before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the West Virginia Human Rights Commission, alleging race, age, sex, disability and national origin discrimination
  • Represented management at numerous labor arbitrations
  • Handled dozens of claims before the West Virginia Human Rights Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
  • Tried more than a dozen actions before the administrative law judges of the West Virginia Human Rights Commission on various claims of age, race, gender and disability discrimination
  • Represented clients in labor and employment disputes
  • Defended numerous deliberate intent actions on behalf of large manufacturers and retailers

  • Defended groundbreaking cases under the W. Va. Wage Payment & Collection Act

  • Arbitrated grievances for unionized employers

  • Litigated charges before the EEOC and West Virginia Human Rights Commission

  • Sought summary judgment in case involving claim of disability discrimination

  • Defended employers, facility owners, product manufacturers and product distributors in traditional and toxic tort-related civil actions alleging deliberate intent, premises liability and product liability theories. Cases were filed on an individual and mass tort basis against defendants related to the mining, welding, petroleum, protective equipment, fire suppression systems and food service industries.

  • Litigated multi-million dollar discrimination lawsuits involving known government contractor

  • Represented major hotel before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on issues relating to wrongful discharge and federal labor relations
  • Represented numerous clients in actions before the West Virginia Human Rights Commission, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other state human rights commissions on behalf of employers
  • Negotiated pre-suit settlements for clients in sensitive employment matters
  • Defended numerous charges before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, West Virginia Human Rights Commission and Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, alleging race, age, sex, sexual preference, disability and national origin discrimination
  • Defended an industrial cleaning enterprise in a class action under the Fair Labor Standards Act

  • Assisted large West Virginia bank in post-merger reorganization of its workforce

  • Sought summary judgment for purported class claims for wage and hour violations and individual claim of discriminatory discharge

  • Jury trial for a large chemical manufacturing company in a case brought by seven women alleging sex discrimination
  • Handled arbitrations against the Teamsters, Steel Workers, Brick Layers, Service Employees, and Chemical Workers unions
  • Handled a number of FLSA / Wage and Hour issues for clients both in litigation and in the investigative stage by the Department of Labor

Susan S. Brewer

"We believe that trusting relationships are essential to achieving client goals, but don't take my word for it, ask one of our clients."

Learn More About Susan

 

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Ours is a client-of-the-firm culture, service model and compensation system that matches the best talent to the assignment and puts your economic interest ahead of ours.

14 Offices Throughout the U.S.

14 offices throughout Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia.

Leaders in our Field

22 of us are ranked as “Leaders in their Field” by Chambers USA.

Leaders in our Field

Steptoe & Johnson was the first firm to successfully secure regulatory approval for a multi-lateral Utica shale well.

10.5 Years

equals the average tenure of our client relationship. We'd like to be in it for the long haul with you too.

Face-to-Face Client Interviews

25+ face-to-face client interviews are conducted every year by our CEO and firm management to learn how we can do better (so please give us an earful).

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