Employment Law

Overview

Employers today must cope with an ever-growing number of laws and regulations governing the workplace.  Greenberg Glusker’s Employment Law Group has decades of experience assisting employers in every facet of current and evolving employment law. We counsel corporations, business executives and high net-worth individuals across a range of industries such as entertainment, healthcare, retail, online commerce and manufacturing.

We work collaboratively and proactively with our clients and focus on anticipating and preventing problems before they arise. Our approach minimizes the risks of litigation and administrative claims facing our clients.

In addition to counseling on day-to-day employment issues, we also work with other practice groups in our Firm.  Comprehensive, multidisciplinary counsel may be needed when our clients undergo major business changes, such as sales and acquisitions, mergers, reorganizations, plant closings and reductions in force.  The attorneys of Greenberg Glusker work as a cohesive team to provide thorough and strategic representation during major business transitions.

We take pride in our ability to guide our clients in minimizing their exposure to employment litigation. However, when disputes become unavoidable, our Employment Litigation Group provides our clients with aggressive, efficient and effective representation in both individual lawsuits and class actions before federal and state courts, arbitrators, mediators and administrative agencies.

For more information, please contact Olivia Goodkin, Chair of Greenberg Glusker's Employment Law Group.

Representative Matters

  • Represented several major motion picture studios in connection with the acquisition of smaller studios. Provided guidance on a full range of issues related to personnel and staffing, including statutory notice requirements, vacation and bonus issues, and evaluated and settled senior executive employment contracts.
  • Successfully obtained restraining order to prevent former employee from stealing and using company's trade secrets and proprietary information, including client lists and pricing and marketing information.
  • Represented clients in the healthcare and entertainment industries in audits conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor and California’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement and often achieved results with significantly reduced or no-fault findings.
  • As trial counsel, we successfully defeated class certification in numerous employment discrimination and wage and hour class actions in both federal and state court.
  • Counseled two national retailers -- one a publicly traded e-commerce company and the other a closely held retailer -- in laying off their employees and closing their operations in California and nationwide.
  • Favorably settled discrimination and harassment claims against head of prominent manufacturing company, less than two months after employee filed suit and one day after taking the employee's deposition.
  • After filing a motion for summary judgment, we obtained voluntary dismissal of actions for pregnancy discrimination and wrongful termination against our client in a nuisance value settlement.
  • On behalf of a major hotel, we obtained voluntary dismissal of a plaintiff’s claim of same-sex harassment after successfully compelling arbitration.
  • Successfully obtained an injunction against two employees of an advertising agency. The injunction resulted from an investigation that followed the employees’ threatened sexual harassment claims and revealed they were attempting to start a competing business while still employed by the agency.
  • In a case described as the largest employment dispute in history, as well as the largest lawsuit against a studio outside of an antitrust case, our firm represented Jeffrey Katzenberg, former head of The Walt Disney Company and co-founder of DreamWorks SKG, in his lawsuit against Walt Disney Studios.
  • Obtained temporary and permanent injunctive relief against two disgruntled former employees who physically threatened our client and the company’s staff.
  • Achieved a unique and extremely satisfying result for our client, the president of a large garment manufacturer, when sexual harassment and wrongful termination actions were filed by four plaintiffs against him and his company; the plaintiffs’ original demand was $4 million. After an investigation and brief discovery, all four plaintiffs dismissed their cases with prejudice and to provide videotaped and written apologies to the president and to the company for filing this action.
  • Creatively resolved multi-million dollar case brought by union against employer for misassignment of work to employees of the wrong union, which resulted in new collective bargaining agreement and agreement of greatly reduced payments of monetary damages over time.
  • Moved to compel arbitration on behalf of large employer defending disability discrimination case and then arbitrated the case, obtaining complete defense award.