In perhaps the most closely-watched employment law class action ever, the U.S. Supreme Court has just decided that up to 1.5 million women cannot proceed with their potentially multi-billion dollar employment discrimination claims alleging that the Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer systematically pays and promotes female workers less than male workers.
“Because the Supreme Court has not accepted cases in the class certification arena for so long, the guidance it provides to lower courts in Dukes will be important, even beyond the direct impact it will have on employers’ defenses to workplace class action lawsuits,” Gerald L. Maatman, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP in Chicago and New York and one of three panelists participating in this webinar said.
Gerald L. Maatman , who represents employers in defending class actions, will be joined in the webinar by Adam T. Klein, a partner at Outten & Golden in New York, who primarily represents workers, and Fatima Goss Graves, vice president for education and employment at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, DC.
Join us as our distinguished panel analyzes this historic decision, addressing questions such as:
Gerald L. Maatman, Jr., Partner, Seyfarth Shaw; Adam T. Klein, Partner, Outten & Golden LLP; Fatima Goss Graves, Vice President for Education and Employment, National Women’s Law Center
Gerald L. Maatman, Jr . is a partner of Seyfarth Shaw, the leading national employment and labor law firm. Mr. Maatman is resident in the firm’s Chicago and New York offices. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington & Lee University (B.A. magna cum laude, 1978), and Northwestern University School of Law (J.D., 1981), where he served as executive editor of one of the school’s law reviews. Mr. Maatman is also an adjunct professor of law in trial advocacy at Northwestern University School of Law, and has served as a guest lecturer in federal civil procedure at the University of Michigan School of Law. Mr. Maatman is co-chair of the firm’s class action defense group, and the author of Seyfarth’s Annual Workplace Class Action Report, and the firm’s Workplace Class Action Blog (at www.workplaceclassaction.com). Mr. Maatman also pioneered the process of conducting employment practices audits to assist employers in structuring effective and practical personnel policies and protocols. These audits are designed to minimize the incidence of employment-related litigation and to maximize management discretion and workplace productivity. Mr. Maatman’s work in this area has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine.
Adam T. Klein is a partner of Outten & Golden LLP and is the chair of the firm's class action practice group. His practice is limited to the prosecution of class action and impact litigation of employment discrimination and wage and hour claims. Mr. Klein presently serves as lead or co-lead plaintiffs' counsel in numerous major class-action lawsuits involving statutory-discrimination claims in the financial services industry and challenges to the use of credit and criminal history records for employment. At present, Mr. Klein is co-lead plaintiffs’ counsel in lawsuits challenging employment practices at Goldman Sachs, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch and the federal Census Bureau. The Census Bureau litigation was filed in affiliation with a consortium of civil-rights organizations challenging the use of arrest and criminal history records as a screen for employment for over 700,000 applicants. Mr. Klein also prosecutes wage and hour class/collective actions against numerous major corporations and was counsel in major settlements involving IBM, Whirlpool, JP Morgan Chase, and other Fortune 500 companies. In addition, Mr. Klein serves as co-lead plaintiffs' counsel in nationwide discrimination class action lawsuits against Smith Barney (gender - Amochaev v. Smith Barney) and Morgan Stanley (race - Jaffe v. Morgan Stanley). Both the Amochaev and Jaffe cases are now settled – each settlement provides class members with substantial monetary relief and systematic changes to company practices.* Mr. Klein also served as co-lead plaintiffs' class counsel in "glass ceiling" gender discrimination class action against MetLife, based on discrimination in promotions and compensation. The term of the MetLife settlement agreement has expired.
Fatima Goss Graves is Vice President for Education and Employment at the National Women’s Law Center, where she directs the Centers work to promote the rights of women and girls at school and in the workplace, including advancing equal pay for equal work and the development of fundamental legal principles of equal opportunity. She uses a number of advocacy strategies in her work ranging from public education and legislative advocacy to litigation, including briefs in the Supreme Court and federal courts of appeals. Ms. Goss Graves recently filed a brief, together with the ACLU, in support of the employees in Wal-Mart v. Dukes on behalf 32 organizations that share a longstanding commitment to civil rights and equality in the workplace.
Prior to joining the Center, she worked as an appellate and trial litigator at Mayer Brown LLP. She began her career as a law clerk for the Honorable Diane P. Wood of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Ms. Goss Graves is a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles and Yale Law School.