King & Spalding

The labor and employment practice at King & Spalding offers a strong group of highly experienced lawyers. The international firm is located throughout the US, but the labor and employment group’s mainstay is Atlanta, with additional sites in Texas and California. As a whole, the practice group is comprised of over 30 lawyers.

In the Atlanta office, Michael Johnston maintains a strong practice representing employers in disputes and internal investigations. Johnston led the team in defending client Bass Pro Outdoor World against the EEOC after the agency filed a federal lawsuit in Texas, which alleged that the client engaged in a nationwide practice of discrimination based on race and national origin in hiring and retaliation. Johnston argued at the district court and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the client before settling the case in mid-2017. Although settled, the case questioned the EEOC’s method of prosecuting systemic cases.

In his investigations practice, Johnston is handling a nationwide EEOC investigation into a company’s practices under the ADA, which has raised several novel legal issues as well.

The labor and employment team has also represented Emory University in a dispute with a former professor who filed discrimination and retaliation claims in addition to a breach of implied employment contract under Georgia Law. The team obtained summary judgment on the former discrimination and retaliation claims in federal court, and in state court on the breach of contract claims as well. The client wrote, ‘That is beyond wonderful’ in response to the victory.

In business for over 130 years, King & Spalding has experienced a substantial expansion from roots in Atlanta to its present network of 20 offices worldwide (one of those having been notched up within the past year), with 10 of these outside the US. Peers are quick to address the firm’s most obvious strengths; one being its global balance of power. “King & Spalding were way ahead of the curve in terms of establishing an international scope. That firm has as many tentacles internationally as it does in the US.” Another area in which the firm reigns supreme is the energy sector. One competitor confirms, “King & Spalding is very deep in the life sciences world, and in energy - forget it. No other big national firm can touch them on the litigation side.” Supporting this claim, the firm has been chosen as counsel of choice in substantial matters for ConocoPhillips and Chevron. The firm is also said to be “the best in the world when it comes to representing the ‘Big Four’ accounting firms.”

A team of firm lawyers composed of practitioners including stars Bobby Meadows, from the Houston office, and Richard Marooney, from New York, secured a major win in a recent landmark case, representing a long-time shareholder of Xerox, in his successful litigation to prevent Xerox and Fuji from consummating the change of control transaction between the two entities that was announced in January 2018. The proposed takeover was initiated by Xerox’s CEO, who did so because he was under fire from the corporate board due to poor performance and, with his position on the line, sought a last-minute avenue to keeping his job secure via certain specified conditions in the transaction agreement. In what was called “a stunning victory,” the King & Spalding team persuaded a New York court to enjoin the $6.1 billion deal.

The firm also boasts several substantial wins in the product liability space, another practice in which the firm has long held a top-tier position. Exemplifying this, the firm attended to several key engagements for RJ Reynolds. Jeff Bucholtz, an appellate specialist in the DC office, lays claim to securing reversals of three major tobacco verdicts that were initially found for the plaintiffs. Between the three cases, Bucholtz overturned nearly $65 million in verdicts. In another matter for this same client, a team including Charlotte’s Ursula Henninger persuaded a Florida jury to return a zero-dollar verdict in the trial of another tobacco case in which the plaintiff, the 82-year old widow of a smoker who had developed lung cancer and died 25 years ago, claimed that her husband smoked against his will and was driven to smoke by addiction, as opposed to enjoying smoking.

DC’s Bobby Burchfield, an “all-purpose guy,” has been long-recognized for his prowess with big-ticket commercial cases at both the trial and appeals levels. Burchfield provides lead counsel in litigation, filed in 2004, in which a class of retirees sought a ruling that their collectively-bargained health benefits were vested and unalterable for life. The firm’s clients are publicly-traded affiliates of the Fiat Group that manufacture equipment for the construction, agricultural, trucking and bus industries. After 14 years of litigation, including four different summary judgment rulings by the district court and three appeals to the Sixth Circuit, in early 2018, the Supreme Court granted the petition for writ of certiorari from the Sixth Circuit’s 2017 ruling, and summarily reversed, unanimously ruling that the right to the benefits terminated when the collective bargaining agreement expired in 2004.

King & Spalding also earns high marks for its securities enforcement and white-collar departments, for which the firm has crafted its own niche, branded “Special Matters and Government Investigations.” In this capacity, partners such as DC’s Michael Pauzé, John Richter and Dixie Johnson, and New York’s Carmen Lawrence, Drew Hruska and Bill Johnson are recipients of frequent peer commendations. Most recently, Bill Johnson was part of a team, comprising the New York and Austin offices that, in March 2018, scored a motion to dismiss in favor of Global Brokerage and 17 named individual directors and officers of the company.

While it has experienced phenomenal growth, King & Spalding still enjoys brand-name stature in its Atlanta flagship office. “They have always been and still are the ‘big dogs’ around here,” concedes one Peachtree Street peer. “You can’t represent Coca-Cola and not be considered Atlanta royalty.” In this office, Andrew Bayman, a protégé of King & Spalding trial celebrity/now senior counsel Chilton Varner, has emerged as a leader in product liability space. Bayman represented Glaxo SmithKline in one of the few remaining filed cases in the long-running Paxil pregnancy litigation, in which a plaintiff alleges that she took Paxil samples from the locked sample closet of her own medical practice during her pregnancy with her third child, and that her Paxil use caused her daughter to be born with serious defects. A team including Atlanta’s David Balser and Los Angeles’ Alex Calfo is currently defending Halyard, the former healthcare division of Kimberly-Clark, in high-stakes litigation and government investigations involving the sale of allegedly defective surgical gowns, which, plaintiffs claim, fail to protect healthcare workers from blood-borne pathogens. The matters include a putative nationwide class action brought by California healthcare facilities, a false advertising suit filed by one of the companies’ competitors, qui tam litigation filed by putative whistleblowers, a personal injury suit filed by a healthcare worker, and civil and criminal investigations by the VA, FDA, and DOJ. Also in the Atlanta office, Richard “Doc” Schneider is called out by peers as “a trial tiger,” with one peer going so far as to confess, “I went up against Doc once, and my ass is still smarting over the kicking that he gave it!” Schneider is noted as being “particularly strong in product liability” but being “great in any kind of complex commercial case.” Schneider is said to be able to “do anything, and do it with aplomb.”