Labor and Employment Litigation

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We regularly advise employers and management-level employees on employment termination issues, including prohibitions against competition, protection of confidential information and trade secrets, wrongful discharge, tenure rights, employment discrimination and harassment. Our litigators regularly represent parties in disputes involving covenants not to compete in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, seeking either to enforce or to prohibit enforcement of such covenants.

The trade secrets and other employment cases we handle often involve advanced technology. For example, we represented scientists involved in litigation over nuclear magnetic resonance technology, which is used in the field of oil exploration. In another case, we represented a respected university seeking to dismiss a tenured professor on the ground that he had falsified scientific testing data in his research. Litigating the matter from informal peer review through a 20-day administrative hearing to an appeal to the University Board of Trustees, we were able to secure the professor's dismissal. In yet another matter, we advised social scientists regarding a covenant not to compete matter involving complex econometric modeling.

We also represent current and former employees in asserting claims to recover employment benefits to which they are entitled, including severance benefits, stock options, compensation and bonuses, and pension and other employee benefit plan distributions.  We have expertise in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”) and regularly represent participants in 401(k) plans in actions to recover losses to their benefits caused by the plan fiduciaries of some of the largest corporations in the United States.  For example, we represent former employees of a defunct farm co-operative in a large ERISA action against the former fiduciaries of the co-operative’s 401(k) plan.  We also represent classes of 401(k) plan participants in actions brought against employee-fiduciaries of certain major energy and pharmaceuticals companies.