Employment

We provide comprehensive employment law services, including counseling, investigation, and litigation, to businesses, non-profit organizations, governmental entities, and individuals.

Greene Espel provides comprehensive employment law services, including counseling, investigation, and litigation, to businesses, non-profit organizations, governmental entities, and individuals.

Fortune 500 companies, public institutions, and executives and individuals seek out our firm for representation in a wide range of employment-related matters. Our attorneys have tried cases to verdict—in state and federal court, and arbitration forums—and handled appeals in courts around the country in the full range of employment disputes.

EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION LITIGATION
We recognize that litigation is a last resort for most employers. Even so, when a dispute turns into a lawsuit or arbitration, our experience can help you.

We regularly defend both private and public sector clients when current or former employees accuse them of discrimination based on sex, race, disability, or other protected-class status. Often these cases involve allegations of retaliation in response to the underlying discrimination actions. And they may even include whistleblower or other similar claims. We work with our clients defending personnel decisions when they are challenged before various administrative agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Department of Economic Security, the Department of Labor, or the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. We also regularly defend such actions in state and federal court, and routinely secure agency determinations in the employers' favor. We have arbitrated numerous cases stemming from EEOC charges when necessary as well.

TRADE SECRET, NON-COMPETE DISPUTES, AND EMERGENCY INJUNCTIVE RELIEF
Employees come and go. Sometimes they take with them commercially sensitive information or regulated customer data. Their new roles may violate non-competition agreements or other legal duties to their former employers. Greene Espel mobilizes immediately to seek, or defend against, the expedited injunction motions that arise in these situations. 

We regularly seek and obtain injunctive relief to prevent former employees and agents of our clients from breaching their employment agreements or using or disclosing non-public personal and financial information, technical trade secrets, and confidential business methods belonging to our clients.  We also successfully resist such motions, whether representing the accused individuals or their new employers.

When necessary, we work with computer forensics specialists to develop the evidence necessary to prove or defend against these cases, and to secure the return and deletion of data from the computers and networks of the other side. We have negotiated creative resolutions to many of these cases, frequently including stipulated preliminary injunctions that ensure that the court orders relief consistent with the parties’ needs.

EMPLOYMENT INVESTIGATIONS
Litigants and governmental entities often seek to hold employers accountable for their employees’ acts or omissions—even if the employer had no idea what their employees were doing. We help employers find out what is happening in their workplaces to avoid such surprises, while complying with privacy standards and other legal requirements and documenting findings for future use.

Among other things, we:

• Advise clients in conducting their own internal workplace investigations;
• Oversee workplace investigations by third-party employment investigators;
• Train internal investigators in investigation and interview skills; and
• Conduct workplace investigations ranging from alleged harassment by employees to potential financial misconduct by high-ranking executives and officials.

EMPLOYMENT COUNSELING
Every Greene Espel employment attorney is an experienced litigator. This gives us special expertise when it comes to what is most important to you—avoiding litigation in the first place through active counseling and training. We can advise your human resource professionals, managers, and supervisors in employment decisions, assist with developing and analyzing workplace policies and procedures, and alert you to relevant changes in the law governing employees and employers

Our attorneys can train your employees and supervisors to help prevent and respond to allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination. Putting such training programs in place can help prevent litigation and can also provide meaningful defenses in the event a lawsuit is filed.

With the benefit of years of experience, we advise employers on compliance issues, workplace practices and procedures, and other complex employment issues. We routinely advise human resources professionals, managers, and supervisors on hiring, disciplining, or discharging employees to help minimize the likelihood of litigation and to ensure that your company has every possible defense available to it in the event of a claim.

We can also negotiate executive employment contracts and severance agreements to maximize the benefits to our client and minimize the chances of future litigation. And we are highly experienced in developing, analyzing, and enforcing non-competition and confidentiality agreements.

We can do all of this on a case-by case basis, or we can assist you in drafting overall workplace policies and procedures to help ensure that your business is always in compliance with the myriad requirements of statutory schemes including:

• Age Discrimination in Employment Act
• Americans With Disabilities Act
• Drug and Alcohol Testing in the Workplace Act
• Equal Pay Act/Minnesota Equal Pay for Equal Work Act
• Fair Labor Standards Act
• Family and Medical Leave Act
• Minnesota Government Data Practices Act
• Minnesota Human Rights Act
• Minnesota Whistleblower Act
• Occupational Safety and Health Acts 
• Public Employment Labor Relations Act
• Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act
• Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act
• Title IX of the Education Amendments
• Veteran's Preference Act

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION
We are also one of the few law firms in the nation featuring a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practice group. We provide counseling and consulting services to a broad range of clients, advising as to the elimination of gender pay gaps, eliminating the biases in feedback and reviews that create pay gaps, and drafting non-biased job descriptions. Learn more about our DEI practice here.