Employment & ERISA

Mayer Brown’s appellate lawyers regularly assist clients in high-stakes appeals involving laws regulating the relationships between employers and employees, including federal and state anti-discrimination statutes, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, ERISA, and state common law.

For example, in Turley v. ISG Lackawanna, Inc. (Second Circuit), which involved claims of racially-motivated workplace harassment, our arguments before the district court and the Second Circuit produced a 90% reduction of jury’s $24 million award of punitive damages. In Bennett v. CSX Transportation, Inc. (Fourth Circuit), a case involving claims under both Section 1981 and FELA, we obtained a rare appellate reversal of a jury verdict in a FELA case on sufficiency-of-the-evidence grounds. We also have deep experience with the FMLA; in Escriba v. Foster Farms (Ninth Circuit), for example, we prevailed in our argument that employers are permitted to honor an employee’s preference to take paid vacation and preserve their FMLA-protected leave, even when they would otherwise qualify for an FMLA-protected leave.

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