Case Description Case Type: Gender Discrimination, Hostile Work Environment, Retaliation, Wage & Hour Individual: Robert De Niro Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP filed a lawsuit on October 3, 2019 against actor, producer, and director Robert De Niro and his corporate alter ego, Canal Productions, Inc. The lawsuit alleges that De Niro and Canal Productions subjected their […]

The complaint alleges the company invests employees’ retirement savings in multiple funds that consistently underperform their investment benchmarks and other similar collective investment funds.

Early in 2015, Freundel plead guilty in a criminal proceeding before the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, to numerous counts of illicitly filming women as they used the “mikvah”- a Jewish ritual bath frequently used by married Orthodox women as well as by women undergoing conversion to Judaism.

According to Plaintiff Kerrie Campbell, a nationally recognized trial lawyer and partner in Chadbourne’s Washington, DC office, female partners at the firm are excluded from positions of decision-making authority and receive less pay and bonuses even when they out-perform their male counterparts. There is only a one-tier partnership, with every partner characterized as an equity partner.

In 2015, Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP filed a $40 million lawsuit against Zara USA, Inc., the flagship brand for the largest fashion retailer in the world, Inditex Group. The lawsuit alleges that Zara discriminated against and then fired its in-house counsel, Ian Jack Miller, because he is Jewish, American, and gay. The case seeks damages for creating a hostile work environment, pay discrimination, and unlawful and retaliatory termination based on Mr. Miller’s nationality, religion, and sexual orientation.

According to his complaint, during his tenure at Giorgio Armani Corporation, the company’s Chief Financial Officer informed General Counsel Fabio Silva he did not trust Mexicans, and thereafter subjected Mr. Silva to increased scrutiny and discriminatory treatment. When General Counsel Silva reported this treatment to Chief Operations Officer, Giorgio Fornari, and Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Lucinda Rosso, General Counsel Silva was berated for complaining. General Counsel Silva was then denied a raise for reporting the discrimination.

The complaint provides extensive details regarding how the senior leadership of Columbia – including the Provost of the University and the Dean of Columbia Business School – allowed one of Columbia’s senior, tenured professors to sexually harass and obstruct the work of a female junior faculty member, plaintiff Enrichetta Ravina. Read More

When it comes to workplace discrimination, your rights often depend on the state where you work.  That’s because states can pass laws that offer even stronger protections for employees than federal law.  Last year, New Jersey did just that when it passed what may be the broadest pay equity law in the nation, the Diane […]

Ever feel like you’ve received extra scrutiny because of your race?  Research suggests that these fears may be well founded.  A recent study indicates that supervisors are far more likely to overlook or forgive the mistakes of white employees – while African-American employees are far more likely to have their mistakes caught, criticized, and used […]

Janet Yellen, Chair of the Federal Reserve and arguably the most powerful woman in the world, is best known for her role in U.S. monetary policy.  But in a recent speech, she tackled a totally different subject – women’s economic progress over the past century.  Her speech, So We All Can Succeed: 125 Years of […]

A lot has been written about why talented women aren’t advancing in academia the way their male colleagues are – including the heavy “baby penalty” paid by female academics.  But the gap we see in tenure rates between male and female faculty members can’t be explained by differences in family commitments or productivity alone.  New research […]

Last night’s GOP debate focused on economics, and I was watching to see if a single Republican candidate – really, anyone – would have anything to say about the challenges facing working women. Marco Rubio stood out as the only one. When asked whether his plan to expand child tax credits was just “another expensive […]

There’s been a recent push to expand public access to pre-K programs, and it’s widely acknowledged that these programs bring benefits to working parents, especially working mothers.   In these discussions though, it’s often assumed that parents’ childcare problems are solved once their kids go off to kindergarten.  The reality, though, is that many school […]

During the Republican debate this week, one exchange that was especially maddening for female viewers ensued when the candidates were asked what seemed like a straightforward question: “Earlier this year, the Treasury Department announced that a woman will appear on the $10 bill.  What woman would you like to see on the $10 bill?” This […]

For women of New York, it’s about to get much easier to bring gender discrimination cases. A ten-point bill called the Women’s Equality Act had been languishing in the New York State Senate for nearly two years because of controversy over a plank that would have shored up abortion rights.  But in March, Democrats in […]

The marginalization of women in Hollywood has gotten a lot of attention lately.  The Sony hacking scandal revealed glaring gender disparities in pay among movie stars and studio executives alike, and Patricia Arquette’s controversial Oscar acceptance speech demanded wage equality for women. Now the spotlight has shifted to the discrimination faced by female directors after the ACLU […]

In New York City, nail salons are ubiquitous, and many women who live or work in the City routinely partake in the affordable luxury of cheap manicures.  But a shocking exposé by the New York Times (posted here and here) shows that cheap manicures come at a very high price for the women who toil […]