Practice Areas & Industries: Kilpatrick Stockton LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

In the traditional labor arena, Kilpatrick Stockton's Labor and Employment group has extensive experience counseling employers on National Labor Relations Act matters and representing them during union organizational and de-certification attempts, arbitration proceedings, collective bargaining negotiations, and unfair labor practice proceedings. The firm also provides a wide spectrum of services in the area of equal employment opportunity, helping companies comply with the affirmative action requirements imposed on governmental contractors by federal, state and municipal laws, executive orders, and ordinances.

Although extremely proactive in our approach in that we advise prudence and planning to avoid litigation, the firm is fully prepared to handle all aspects of any lawsuits that may arise for a client. Our lawyers have substantial experience defending a wide variety of employment-related lawsuits, including cases alleging employment discrimination, violations of federal and state wage and hour laws, wrongful discharge, and state-law claims.

Our attorneys also provide seasoned legal advice to corporate clients on compliance with one of the most intricate areas of employer concerns¿the ever-changing body of occupational safety and health law. In this area, we can help by assisting in drafting corporate procedures and practices to comply with government regulations, developing policies on subjects as diverse as drug testing and preventing workplace harassment, and helping to address such emerging problems as violence in the workplace.

For clients with international operations, we advise on issues involving executive-level personnel in countries outside the United States¿including employment agreements, terminations, and severance payments under the laws of other jurisdictions. We represent both U.S. and non-U.S. employers before U.S. departments and agencies including the Immigration and Naturalization Service, embassies and consulates, and the Department of Labor, and defend claims brought under the anti-discrimination provisions of the U.S. immigration laws.

Representative Transactions

• Obtained a jury verdict for a large financial institution in a multi-plaintiff racial harassment and unpaid overtime suit.
• Defeated attempted class action certification and EEOC intervention in race discrimination lawsuits by plaintiffs at eight facilities of a major defense contractor.
• Persuaded a U.S. District Court to vacate a labor arbitration award on the grounds that the arbitrator exceeded his authority and succeeded in having that order affirmed in the Court of Appeals.
• Obtained significant work rule concessions and increases in employee contributions to health care costs while acting as chief spokesman during negotiations for a well-known bottled water company.
• Convinced the National Labor Relations Board to abandon its efforts to enforce an order directing a major snack food maker to release national wage data and employment demographics to union negotiators.
• Provided assistance to management during union organizing drives and in litigation before The National Labor Relations Board that resulted in what is believed to be the largest union decertification election in U.S. history. As a result, approximately 4,000 engineers at the KS client facilities in California and Florida became union free after some fifty years of representation.
• Obtained a unique NLRB ruling that allowed an employer's administrative structure to dictate the scope of a sales unit, substantially increasing the number of locations that must be organized by a union before a representation election may be held among our client's sales force.
• Helped a national financial institution avoid a class action lawsuit and negotiated a favorable settlement of the claims.
• Achieved significant victories in two consolidated, nationally publicized lawsuits alleging race discrimination at eight facilities of a major aeronautical manufacturer, defeating class certification on behalf of thousands of individuals.
• Successfully handled one of the largest union election campaigns in Georgia history.
• Won summary judgment for our client, an air cargo company in a potential class action seeking unpaid overtime compensation.
• Assisted a well-known soft drink manufacturer in a union organizational campaign at the client's Atlanta, Georgia facility. A local of the Graphic Communications International Union sought to represent employees, but the union was defeated in an election in which employees voted more than two to one against union representation.
• Served as national labor counsel for a global beverage company providing advice and counseling, assistance in representation campaigns, and representation in litigation in courts and before administrative agencies. In addition, the firm handles all of the company's labor arbitrations nationwide, which number from twenty-five to seventy per year.
• Successfully defended a nationally known financial institution against a lawsuit that originally alleged seventeen counts of employment-related wrongdoing by our client.
• Group lawyers represented a company in successfully suing fourteen Teamsters locals in California under an unprecedented interpretation of Section 8(b)(4) of NLRA. The client ultimately collected over $500,000 in damages, and the new interpretation of the NLRA advanced by the firm was adopted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
• In a three-month strike involving more that 5,000 employees, we worked closely with our client in formulating management strategy. Our lawyers successfully obtained injunctive relief against strike violence and mass picketing and defended a reserved gate system for contractors through initiation of unfair labor practice proceedings.
• Group lawyers represented a major manufacturer in an arbitration proceeding. Despite contract language, the arbitrator held that the company's decision did not violate the labor agreement. After vigorous litigation challenging the award, the firm obtained a U.S. Court of Appeals decision upholding the arbitration award.
• Represented a client in litigation asserting secondary boycott and antitrust violations against a union for placing improper restrictions on the client's sales force servicing grocery markets throughout Colorado. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit sustained the theory advanced by the firm, and a favorable settlement resulted.
• Successfully defended more than twenty lawsuits alleging discriminatory terminations or demotions arising out of force reductions and reorganizations. Each of these cases was resolved successfully by favorable settlement, by summary judgment, or at trial (including federal jury verdicts).
• Won one of the earliest wrongful discharge cases in the United States and since have defended numerous other cases alleging various types of employer misconduct, ranging from defamation to sexual assault and harassment.
• Helped clients engaged in government contracting to develop affirmative action plans and respond to compliance audits.
• Obtained summary judgments dismissing ADA claims against a major retailer by a customer greeter with retinitis pigmentosa, an airline by diabetic flight attendants and a pilot with a history of psychiatric disorders, a public authority by a police officer with a benign essential tremor, and a manufacturer by a clerical employee with agoraphobia and panic disorder.
• Worked closely with clients to resolve difficult questions concerning drug testing in the workplace under federal and state law. One of our partners co-authored a leading treatise on this subject.
• In a recent one-year period, the firm assisted clients in nineteen campaigns and elections, including the successful handling of the largest representation election in one client's history.
• Successfully represented a major telecommunications company before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in an action brought by the company to set aside an arbitration award. The resulting Fifth Circuit decision represented the first occasion when that court had ever affirmed a district court decision vacating an arbitration award.
• Defended numerous multiplaintiff or class action under Title VII, the Age of Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), the Fair Labor Standards Act, ERISA, and more recently the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
• Defended more than thirty employment-related class action or attempted class action lawsuits.
• Defeated class certification in lawsuits alleging claims for retirement benefits on behalf of 5,000 individuals and claims for alleged wage and hour violations on behalf of 4,000 individuals, among others.
• Negotiated a favorable settlement of broad race discrimination claims against a large grocery store chain, thus preempting the threatened class action suit.
• Worked with Employee Benefits Group lawyers to defend successfully two multiclaimant lawsuits (one of which involved a putative class of 2,000 plaintiffs) alleging that the defendants violated ERISA by not disclosing plans to offer enhanced retirement programs in the future.
• Group lawyers represented a major national restaurant chain in a nationwide investigation by the Department of Labor (DOL) in which the DOL challenged the exempt status of employees in certain job classifications.
• Assisted a global beverage company in planning and executing a force reduction involving employees in more than sixty countries.
• Successfully represented clients in toxic tort litigation, environmental litigation, and other areas in which employee safety and health standards are intimately related to the subject matter of the claims.