Labor & Employment Law Firm of the Year USA

Firm Profile

The Employment Law Group® law firm — known as TELG — represents employees who stand up to wrongdoing in the workplace.

Its clients

include whistleblowers; victims of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation; and people who have been underpaid or wrongfully dismissed.

Based in Washington, D.C., the firm offers a unique combination of strengths:

• Courtroom expertise: TELG’s attorneys are true trial lawyers. Because they thrive in courtrooms, they stand ready to take each case to a jury if necessary.

• Groundbreaking legal strategy: TELG’s cases have set important precedents in federal and state courts, blazing a trail for other employment attorneys to follow.

• High-profile results: TELG has won major legal and financial victories for its clients, including a $57 million False Claims Act settlement.

• Personal focus: With just four principal attorneys, TELG is a boutique firm that

Notable Legal Work

Over the past year TELG has forged new law while scoring victories for its clients.

In September 2012, a U.S. District Court refused to dismiss the case of Richard Kramer, ruling that the Dodd-Frank Act protects whistleblowers who make disclosures covered by other statutes — even if those disclosures weren’t made in the exact manner prescribed by Dodd-Frank. Mr. Kramer’s case was the first Dodd-Frank claim to survive a motion to dismiss in federal court.

In October 2012, a federal jury awarded more than $800,000 in damages to Weihua Huang, a whistle- blower at the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine. This was the first case reported to reach a jury verdict under the 2009 anti-retaliation provisions of the False Claims Act.

In January 2013, the U.S. Department of Labor ruled favorably on the case of Jose Dos Santos, a Paris-based aircraft technician for Delta Airlines. It was the first time the so-called “AIR21” Act was

held to protect a whistleblower employed outside the U.S.

In January 2013, the Labor Department found that actions taken against Luis Fernandez after his firing still may have violated the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), a significant broadening of the application of SOX to whistleblower cases.

In May 2013, a Maryland appeals court reinstated a $650,000 retaliation verdict for Donna Jackson, a former community manager who had reported a complaint of discrimination. In doing so, the court ushered into Maryland law the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2011 formulation of “cat’s paw” liability, under which an employer may be held liable for retaliation even if the ultimate decision-maker was unaware of such a motive.

In addition, several TELG cases won national media attention — including that of John Melson and Kenneth Smith, who used a cellphone camera to document misconduct by U.S. military contractors working in Afghanistan, and were featured on ABC World News; and of Vivienne Parra, who was fired

by a hospital after having a second mastectomy, and whose case was featured in the Washington Post.

And in August 2013 TELG weighed into the historic Lawson case, which this fall will become the U.S. Supreme Court’s first whistleblower case under the SOX statute. TELG was tapped by the National Employment Lawyers Association and the Government Accountability Project to draft their amicus curiae brief in the case.

Contact

The Employment Law Group, P.C. 888 17th Street NW 9th Floor Washington, DC 20006

Phone: 1-202-331-2883 Web: www.EmploymentLawGroup.com Email: inquiry@EmploymentLawGroup.com

The firm has won numerous accolades. Super Lawyers recently named all four of the firm’s principal attorneys to its 2013 list of outstanding lawyers — and also named one of the firm’s associate attorneys as a “Rising Star.” Attorneys at TELG also are recognized by Best Lawyers, Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo, and Washingtonian magazine, among others.

chooses its clients carefully, gives them close attention, and believes in them deeply.

One of the firm’s principals is president of the Virginia Employment Lawyers Association; another is the immediate past president of the Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Association (MWELA). An associate attorney is currently a board member at MWELA.

The firm’s lawyers have been sought for their expertise by media outlets ranging from the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times to CCTV, the American arm of a Chinese state TV broadcaster.

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Lawyer Monthly Legal Awards 2013

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