Labor & Employment Law – Employers

The legal landscape impacting employers is ever-evolving. The associated compliance mandates can be complex and confusing, even for the most seasoned owners, business unit leaders, risk managers, and HR professionals.

Labor, employment, and HR issues, for small businesses and Fortune 500 companies alike, can disrupt daily operations, company culture, and the bottom line. At Lockaby PLLC, we provide creative, compassionate, and business-minded counsel on the full spectrum of labor and employment issues to businesses of all sizes.

We partner with our clients to fully understand their industry, their operations, their risk tolerance, and their unique workplace and workforce challenges to provide proactive and pragmatic legal counsel on all matters that arise during the employment lifespan, from recruiting, hiring, and onboarding to termination, layoffs, and reductions in force—and everything in between:

• Providing day-to-day HR advice and counsel on a wide range of issues, including EEO policies and practices, background checks, disciplinary action, leaves of absence, reasonable accommodations, and other state and federal statutory and regulatory compliance;
• Defending discrimination, retaliation, harassment, and wage-and-hour claims against employers and management in state and federal courts and administrative agencies;
• Conducting sexual harassment investigations and other internal investigations of director, officer, and employee misconduct;
• Defending government investigations into wage-and-hour compliance, employee misconduct, and officer and director liability, including those initiated by the Kentucky Labor Cabinet, the Department of Labor, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the National Labor Relations Board;
• Drafting and negotiating all manner of workplace-related contracts, including employment contracts, independent contractor agreements, non-compete agreements, arbitration agreements, and severance and separation agreements;
• Prosecuting and defending breach-of-contract claims relating to non-competition and non-solicitation restrictions, confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, and the like; and
• Providing labor-and-employment counsel to buyers and sellers in mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate restructurings, including pre-deal due diligence related to employment contracts, restrictive covenants, deferred compensation plans, HR and employment liabilities, and statutory and regulatory compliance under international, federal, state, and local laws and regulations and post-merger integration.

Our attorneys are among the most experienced and well-respected members of the bar, having previously worked at some of the largest law firms in the country and having held leadership positions in the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office and the Kentucky Labor Cabinet. They are recognized by their peers as Kentucky SuperLawyers and SuperLawyers “Rising Stars.” And they are thought leaders, regularly speaking and presenting on the hottest topics in labor-and-employment law.

Our successful results speak for themselves:

Obtained summary judgment and dismissal of the plaintiff’s claims for workers’ compensation retaliation and unpaid overtime wages in action against healthcare client.

Obtained summary judgment and dismissal of the plaintiff’s claims for FMLA interference, FMLA retaliation, disability discrimination, and workers’ compensation retaliation in action against healthcare client.

Obtained summary judgment and dismissal of the plaintiff’s claims for disability discrimination and retaliation in action against manufacturing client.

Obtained dismissal of the plaintiff’s wage-and-hour claims on mootness grounds after the plaintiff rejected a Rule 68 offer of judgment, the first such dismissal of its kind in the Sixth Circuit and only the second such dismissal in the United States in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Campbell-Ewald opinion, in action against healthcare client.

Obtained summary judgment and dismissal of the plaintiff’s ERISA claims, which was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and obtained denial of the plaintiff’s cert petition before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Obtained Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal of the plaintiff’s claims for sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and wrongful termination in action against hotel client.

Obtained summary judgment and dismissal of the plaintiff’s claims arising under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in action against national cable TV provider.