Press & News
Jerry Maatman Featured in Employment Law360
11/16/2007
“Q & A With Seyfarth Shaw’s Gerald L. Maatman, Jr.”
Jerry Maatman was featured in the November 14, 2007 edition of Employment Law360 in the publication’s “series of chats with high-profile employment layers.” Below are the eight questions posed to Jerry with his responses.
Q. What attracted you to employment law as a practice area? And what keeps you interested?
A. The chance to try jury cases after the advent of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 sealed my devotion to practicing employment law. The myriad ways in which people interact with one another in the workplace and implicate their employers’ interests – from high-stakes business problems to cutting edge legal problems – keeps me engaged on a daily basis. I could not imagine practicing law in another substantive area. I now spend most of my time defending workplace class actions involving employment discrimination, wage-and-hour, and civil rights/denial of access issues. I enjoy dealing with all the “moving parts” that need to be orchestrated in defending class actions. It’s never dull.
Q. What's the most challenging case you've worked on, and why?
A. It was my defense of the first sex harassment class action ever brought by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. I defended a Wall Street brokerage firm. Spitzer asserted novel claims under New York labor and business laws on behalf of a class of 500 female employees and called a series of press conferences where the lawsuit’s allegations were made public. The class action caused the client to face intense pressure from a range of stake holders – including its employees, investors and outside directors – after the attorney general made a public settlement proposal of over $10 million. We were able to convince the trial court to dismiss the lawsuit based on standing concepts and then settle the case on advantageous terms in exchange for the attorney general dropping his threatened appeal.
Q. What's the most ridiculous lawsuit you've defended a client against?
A. It wasn’t an employment case. A veterinary practice asked me to defend a malpractice case against one of its veterinarians who was sued for a botched surgery of a parrot. The plaintiff claimed that his bird could shave him by holding a razor in its beak and that the parrot’s untimely death caused the owner to lose a contract to film (with his pet) a TV commercial for a shaving cream company. The trial lasted a week. The jury found for the veterinarian. And to make it a truly happy ending, the client paid the bill without a squawk.
Q. Which aspects of employment law do you think are in need of reform, and why?
A. Rule 23 standards are so plaintiff-friendly, especially in the Ninth Circuit, that some jokingly suggest that it’s possible to certify a ham sandwich in California. Title VII’s venue provisions allow plaintiffs to sue almost anywhere major employers do business, so the Northern District of California in San Francisco has become a virtual ground zero for mega-class actions. The result is that class certification case law in the Ninth Circuit has lost its moorings to the purposes of multiparty litigation and notions of fairness and justice.
Q. Where do you see the next wave of employment cases coming from?
A. Workplace class actions are getting bigger, the plaintiffs’ bar is getting more sophisticated and the level of damages is increasing exponentially. I see high-stakes class actions for employment discrimination and wage-and-hour violations increasing and posing ever-greater risks for employers.
Q. Outside your own firm, can you name one employment lawyer who's impressed you and tell us why?
A. William Schaller of Baker & McKenzie is an employment lawyer’s employment lawyer. He’s a brilliant strategist who specializes in covenant-not-to-compete cases. He is fearless at trial and focuses like a laser on crafting practical solutions for clients. His mind is like a legal encyclopedia, and he wins his cases based on solid preparation and outstanding lawyering skills.
Q. What advice would you give to a young lawyer who's interested in getting into your practice area?
A. If you want to handle a client’s high-stakes employment litigation, you need to learn the ins and outs of Rule 23 decisional law and then use that knowledge to engineer creative, “outside the box” strategies to fracture or defeat an opponent’s certification theories. While deep knowledge of legal precedents, statistics, and expert issues are all important components of a successful defense strategy, creativity and originality are even more important. Such stuff doesn’t happen overnight, so young lawyers need to learn their craft by devoting intense preparation to the nuts and bolts of complex litigation.
Q. I'm a general counsel with a Fortune 500 company facing a major employment class action. Why should I hire your firm?
A. Seyfarth Shaw is one of only a few defense firms that has seen and handled it all when it comes to workplace class actions. We likely have the deepest bench of class action practitioners of any defense firm. And the plaintiffs’ bar and the EEOC respect us as one of their toughest opponents in bet-the-company class actions. We have highly skilled class action lawyers who are thought leaders on the cutting edge Rule 23 and substantive employment law issues. Our firm regularly is engaged by corporations to defend the biggest and most complex workplace class actions in the United States. To date, we are the only firm that has tried and won a defense verdict in a California wage-and-hour class action. What also sets us apart is the espirit de corp among our class action lawyers – a dedicated national practice group that uses technology to train our young lawyers and harvest our institutional knowledge for the benefit of our clients in high-stakes class action litigation.
Gerald L. Maatman Jr. is a partner in Seyfarth Shaw LLP’s labor and employment law practice group and co-chair of the firm’s complex discrimination litigation group.