More than a year after a federal appeals court ruled that Novartis sales reps are not exempt from overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and, therefore, should be paid overtime (back story), the drugmaker has agreed to a $99 million settlement, according to lawyers for the reps. The move is significant because, until now, drugmakers have been fighting…
Jan 25 (Reuters) – Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp has agreed to pay $99 million to settle a lawsuit by current and former sales representatives who claimed they were denied overtime pay despite working more than 40 hours per week. The settlement resolves a 2006 lawsuit now covering more than 7,000 plaintiffs who have worked for the affiliate of Switzerland-based Novartis AG,…
Posted July 21st, 2011. Sanford Heisler has forced Big Pharma companies to focus on overtime issues. Sue ReisingerCorporate Counsel The 25-lawyer firm that’s casting such a long shadow is Sanford Heisler. Its first major win against a global drug giant came last July, when Sanford Heisler won the largest jury award ever—$250 million—in a sex discrimination case against New Jersey–based…
In an interview Thursday with OTC, Sanford Heisler partner David Sanford said he has no reason to hope for good news from the Court, especially given the Justices’ ruling earlier this month in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion—a case which precluded consumer class actions in favor of individual arbitrations. Though the Court granted certiorari to Wal-Mart on the only-a-lawyer-could-love-it question of…
A class action suit alleging that Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals discriminated against women employees has been expanded. Just days after the one year anniversary of winning a $250 million verdict for female sales representatives at Novartis Pharmaceuticals, the law firm of Sanford Wittels & Heisler (SWH) recently filed a nearly identical class action on behalf of female sales representatives at Bayer…
Less than a year after wining a $250 million trial victory against Novartis for discriminating against nearly 6,000 female sales representatives, lawyers at Sanford Heisler filed similar class discrimination claims two months ago against a new defendant, Bayer. The allegations strongly mirrored those against Novartis, but Bayer could point to at least one big difference: The proposed Bayer class included…
In the memo, which was posted as a blog on Novartis\’s internal website and was seen by Dow Jones Newswires, Jimenez said the staff dismissals came after he had visited several local markets, where some senior staff failed to live up to the company\’s internal code of conduct. Jimenez, who took over as CEO last year from long-standing Daniel Vasella,…
Posted April 5th, 2011. NEW YORK — Two women who had sales jobs with Eaton Corp. have sued the Cleveland-based manufacturer alleging gender discrimination. The two filed the class-action lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in New York City. They worked in Eaton offices in New York and New Jersey. The women allege they were paid less than male counterparts, were…
When you’re on the winning side of the biggest gender discrimination verdict in history–last May’s $250 million punitive damages award in a class action against Novartis–word gets around. So when a half-dozen female employees of Bayer went looking for lawyers, it’s not a big surprise that they ended up at the offices of Sanford Heisler, where former Litigators of the…
Posted March 3rd, 2011. As it appeared in the Boston Globe Globe Staff A woman in the Boston office of Cigna Health Care Inc. is seeking $100 million in damages in a lawsuit that alleges that the health care provider systematically discriminates against women by fostering a hostile work environment and by denying women rightful salary increases. Specifically, the suit…