Employment Practice

Schwartz Kelly, LLC regularly provides employment advice and legal counsel to executives, corporate counsel and human resource professionals about the myriad of employment issues facing employers today. Our mission is to help our clients reduce the risks and expenses of litigation. We emphasize the importance of developing consistent employment practices and policies throughout our clients' organizations. We also help our clients protect their confidential information and assets, competitive advantage, key personnel, and implement strategies for attracting and retaining talented workers. We assist our clients in complying with federal and state laws and regulations governing the workplace.

Our clients include start-up companies, small to mid-size privately owned companies, Fortune 500 companies, and not-for-profit organizations. Our clients represent many industries, such as professional services, manufacturing, construction, health care, banking, and software developers. Our practice devotes a significant commitment to representing employers in the health care field and we are intimately familiar with the issues that confront health care practitioners, who are physicians first and employers second.

As an example, we offer our clients services in the following areas:

Employment policies and practices
Non-compete and confidentiality agreements
Plans to protect confidential information and other intangible assets
Audits of employment practices and protecting confidential information
Employment contracts, including executive or key person contracts
Termination disputes
Employee handbooks, manuals, and personnel guidelines
Wage-hour and other compensation issues
Policies and practices relating to employee leaves
Training managers and employees on compliance issues, diversity, anti-harassment and discrimination
Providing leadership and ethical decision-making training to managers
Performance evaluation processes
Reductions in force or organizational restructuring

When litigation occurs, we represent our clients in defense of claims by their former employees for wrongful discharge, discrimination or harassment, violation of federal or state employment laws, breach of contract or public policy claims. We also represent clients in litigation involving restrictive covenants or protection of trade secrets, customers or key employees.

Representative Matters

General Surgical Practice, Superior Court of New Jersey, Hudson County - June 2005.
We represented a surgeon in defense of claims that he violated New Jersey's whistle blower statute. We tried the case to a unanimous no cause jury verdict after six days of trial and two hours of jury deliberation.

Pharmacy, United States District Court, District of New Jersey.
We represented a pharmacy and its owners in a complex fraud, trade secret, employee piracy, and RICO case. Our client alleged that a potential purchaser misappropriated confidential information and used it to open its own pharmacy, hired away its employees, imitated its trade dress and engaged in fraud and unfair competition. The parties were able to reach an amicable resolution of their claims after a year of intense litigation.

Plumbing Contractor (35 to 50 employees).
We created an employee manual, human resource guidelines and implementing forms for hiring, employee discipline and performance evaluation, safety, workers compensation, vehicle use policy, substance abuse, termination, confidentiality, and more for a contractor whose growth had expanded beyond its internal human resources capacity.