Maryland Employment Defense Attorney

Employers are often targets for aggrieved employees who seek to assert legal claims to recover monetary compensation.

There are numerous common law and statutory claims through which employees can file claims. Lerch Early’s employment attorneys have the experience and skills to defend against such employment-based claims.

Handling Wrongful Termination Cases

The common law in Maryland, DC, and Virginia prohibits employers from firing at-will employees in violation of a clearly defined public policy. Such wrongful termination claims can be expensive to defend against.

Lerch Early’s attorneys understand how to challenge the underlying basis for the wrongful termination claim and seek to dispose of the claim early through a motion to dismiss. If a claim survives a motion to dismiss, then an attorney can properly develop a factual record that best sets up an employer to prevail against a wrongful termination claim. 

Claims Under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)

Employers with 50 or more employees must comply with the FMLA, which requires employers to provide 12 weeks of unpaid leave for certain family and medical related leave needs.  Employers that interfere with employee FMLA are subject to FMLA interference claims.

Wage-Hour Claims, Including Those Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

Wage and hour laws at the federal, state, and local level require employers to pay non-exempt employees a minimum wage and overtime for hours worked over 40 in a workweek.  Employees can file claims when they are not paid properly under these statutes.

A knowledgeable and skilled employment attorney is needed to ensure such claims are defended appropriately.  Each wage and hour law has enhanced damages and attorney fee shifting available, making it essential that employers take these claims seriously, as there is often much more at stake than simply paying an employee the lost amount of wages.

Other Common Law Claims

Employers sometimes find themselves sued for a variety of other common law claims, such as invasion of privacy, tortious interference with business advantage, and breach of contract.  Lerch Early’s employment attorneys are well equipped to defend against these claims. 

The Importance of Working with a Maryland Employment Defense Attorney

Employers faced with legal claims need experienced employment litigators who understand the substantive claims to ensure a defense strategy can be employed as efficiently as possible.

Consult Lerch, Early & Brewer for Aid In Protecting Your Business

Employers faced with litigation must consider many difficult and important issues. A win in a trial at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees or immeasurable damage to the brand is not always the best outcome.

Lerch Early’s attorneys help employers evaluate and navigate their risk from employment claims and set a strategy to get our clients out of litigation as quickly and efficiently as possible based on the facts and circumstances of each situation.

Success Stories

Resolution of Davis-Bacon Claim

Challenge

The U.S. Department of Labor alleged that one of our government contracting clients had not paid its workers the wages mandated under the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires contractors and subcontractors performing work on federal or District of Columbia contracts to pay the local prevailing wage for the type of work being performed.

Strategy

We helped our client to identify the work that was performed on the project and to explain to the DOL investigator why the classifications listed in the applicable wage determination did not apply to this work. We assisted our client to prepare and submit a conformance request to DOL to obtain wage and fringe benefit rates that was appropriate for the work that our client performed. Not only were these rates more in line with the prevailing wage rates for this type of work in the area, they were also substantially lower than the rates the DOL investigator had initially selected. We then assembled a complete package that documented all wages paid and fringe benefits (health insurance, paid leave, vehicle and cell phone allowances) provided by our client to its workers on this project. By including the fringe benefits we were able to further reduce the amount of back pay owed by the client to its workers.

Result

We negotiated an agreement between our client and the DOL on back wages that was more than a 90% reduction from the original back wages demand made by DOL.

Insights