Employment Law

Orrick represents many of the most prestigious employers in the world, from Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase & Co., and Morgan Stanley within the financial services industry to a diverse group of other industries, including companies such as Intel, Oracle, IBM, Northwest Airlines, American Airlines, NBC, The Washington Post Company, and Rolls Royce North America.

Our international practice handles the full range of employment and labor law matters, including complex class action defense, high-exposure individual claims, trade secret litigation, and all forms of counseling associated with corporate transactions including mergers and acquisitions, downsizing, and restructurings.

We are recognized as among the top practitioners in labor and employment law in the United States and Japan, and we have successfully tried many cases to verdict and resolved numerous other cases in a variety of ADR proceedings. We appear frequently as speakers at the most prestigious programs on these issues and are regularly quoted on novel employment law issues in leading business publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Corporate Counsel, and The American Lawyer.

Recently, the group has handled a number of notable engagements, including the representation of:

• Carrols Corporation. Carrols Corporation, the largest owner of Burger King franchises in the United States, in obtaining summary disposition against the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a class action brought on behalf of 90,000 employees in the biggest pattern and practice claim of sexual harassment ever brought by the EEOC.
• Major California Employers. Many of the major employers in the state of California in numerous wage-and-hour class actions brought under California state law.
• Skis Rossignol S.A. Skis Rossignol, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of ski and golf equipment, in the Tokyo District Court in:
  • the successful defense of a preliminary injunction action filed in Japan by the former president of a Japanese subsidiary; and
  • obtaining a favorable settlement of a preliminary injunction action filed by employees in Japan who alleged that they were the victims of abusive dismissals in connection with the restructuring.