Labor & Employment Winner
Seven Years Ago, UNITE Here and The International Brotherhood of Teamsters slammed Cintas Corporation with accusations of race, national origin, and gender discrimination. The unions convinced the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to lodge similar charges against the company, which is the largest uniform provider and industrial launderer in North America.
A year later, the unions enlisted plaintiffs firm Miner, Barnhill & Galland to file a nationwide discrimination class action against Cintas. By then, the NAACP and members of the congressional black and Hispanic caucuses had jumped on the unions’ bandwagon.
Despite the assaults, Cintas prevailed–big-time. During five years of steadily chipping away at the claims, Nancy Abell, the head of Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker’s labor and employment practice, and her team stopped class certification nationwide and in Michigan; in addition, they got class claims in California and in arbitration dismissed. At press time only a single individual plaintiff remained. Abell and partner Heather Morgan were equally effective at disposing of the EEOC charges; all were either dropped or settled–without the company paying a cent.
“We would not have won if Paul, Hastings were not involved,” says Cintas senior counsel Max Langelkamp. For the Cincinnati-based company, the stakes were huge. The class action and EEOC charges covered 19,000 Cintas female and minority employees and job applicants at more than 350 sites.
Paul, Hastings’s readiness to take on and win this type of multifront legal battle made it a clear winner for the labor and employment litigation department of the year. Defending such complex and high-profile cases requires a particularly deep bench of experts who draw on experience in all aspects of employment law and traditional labor practice. The firm’s longtime clients include American International Group, Inc.; Alaska Airlines, Inc.; AT&T Inc., UBS Financial Services Inc.; and United Parcel Service, Inc.
Paul, Hastings’s 152 lawyers in the practice group chalked up a 12-1 record in court trials, and a 14-0 record in arbitrations during the time period of our competition.
Among the wins: defeating a state wage-and-hour class action for the Automobile Club of Southern California–one of the few class actions of this sort that has been tried to a verdict. (Potential damages in the matter, in which employees claimed that they worked overtime off the clock and through meal periods, approached $100 million.) Increasingly, “companies are not willing to settle [class actions] anymore,” says Abell. “If you settle one, there will be more to follow.”
Clients also count on the firm to handle last-minute trials: Just weeks before trial in June 2008–and after two other firms failed to reach a settlement–Abell jumped into a discrimination and harassment case, winning a jury verdict for client Alaska Airlines in Washington state court.
Paul, Hastings lawyers also helped clients turn back other potentially disastrous disputes before trial. Three weeks before trial, George Abele, one of the firm’s go-to appellate lawyers, convinced a federal district court in April 2008 to decertify a class of 1,300 supervisors in a high-value wage-and-hour dispute, Marlo v. United Parcel Service, Inc . Later that summer, Barbara Brown, a class action expert, defeated certification of a class of female sales representatives in a gender discrimination case, Remien v. EMC Corp., that made the front page of The Wall Street Journal .
On the appellate side, Paul, Hastings was the only practice group we evaluated whose lawyers argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case decided during our submission period. In Sprint/United Management Co. v. Mendelsohn, an individual age discrimination claim, appellate guru Paul Cane challenged the admissibility of “me, too” evidence–testimony by employees in other, unconnected departments within the same company. He took Sprint Nextel Corporation’s position all the way to the Supreme Court. The Court’s February 2008 decision is mixed–it reversed the appeals court, but sent the issue back to the district court judge for reconsideration without clarifying the standards in this hotly debated area. But even so, it’s impressive that Cane convinced the Court to take the case at all, says Dennis Eagan, the lawyer for the plaintiff. “It’s very rare for the high court to take evidence cases,” he notes. (On November 18 Cane argued the issue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit for a second time.)
With few exceptions, Paul, Hastings’s opponents generally praise the professionalism of the practice’s lawyers. One opposing counsel describes lawyers in the group as “top-notch–the type of opponent that you would want on the other side.” Another calls the firm’s labor and employment lawyers “formidable adversaries who are fair.”
Clients are even more effusive. Joseph Henslee, counsel for UPS–the second-largest employer in the nation, after Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.–says Paul, Hastings was “single-handedly responsible for getting [the class] decertified” in Marlo v. UPS, a matter that “goes to the heart of how we operate our business.” (At press time 46 individual claims against UPS for wage-and-hour misclassification are expected to go to trial.)
But how much did Paul, Hastings’s victories change the landscape of employment law? Not much, say plaintiffs counsel who regularly faced the firm, noting that there have been relatively few earth-shattering matters in employment law in the last two years and that Bush-era regulators have tended to side with management over labor. “Management lawyers have had the wind at their backs in the last eight years,” notes one.
Can Paul, Hastings continue its successful run if–as most lawyers expect–the regulatory and legislative pendulum swings toward labor? Abell says her group will be ready: “We are working feverishly to educate our clients and collaborate on new strategies to defend claims under every new law, regulation, and policy before the ink has dried in Washington.” Or, as they like to say in D.C.: “Yes, we can.”
–Vivia Chen
Practice Group Size
Partners: 47
Associates: 97
Counsel: 8
Practice Group ( as Percent of Firm)
14.2%
Estimated Percent (of Firm Revenue 2009)
16.7%
On the Docket
Defending Oracle Corporation in a suit over the applicability of California wage-and-hour laws to interstate traveling employees; representing Dollar Tree, Inc., in a claim by 500 store managers for overtime.
