Partner Reflection: Andrew Melzer

By Andrew Melzer, New York Partner | July 2024

I am driven as much by a sense of injustice as a sense of justice.

Upon graduating from college, I was thinking about potential career opportunities such as graduate school in history, freelance writing, and documentary filmmaking. But none of these possibilities seemed quite right. Ultimately, I decided to go to law school in order to make a difference in the world, help clients in need of legal assistance, and advance the cause of civil rights and social justice.

A career in the law, particularly at Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, has enabled me to do just that. It has proven to be meaningful, challenging, and fulfilling in all the best ways.

Following a judicial clerkship, I worked for two years in Zurich, Switzerland helping restore looted and stolen Swiss bank accounts to Holocaust victims and their heirs. Given significant gaps in historical records and documentation, we did the best that we could to match accounts with their rightful owners.

This experience was a prelude to my position at Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, where I have worked since 2007 and been a partner since 2014. Our firm considers itself to be a private firm acting in the public interest and each of its attorneys and staff members embody this concept. It is thrilling to collaborate with a collection of talented individuals who all share the same commitment.

While here, I have had the opportunity to work on important and rewarding cases in areas such as wage and hour, employment discrimination, workplace safety, fair housing, prisoners’ rights, consumer protection, and more. In pursuing these cases, our firm has achieved substantial redress for our clients and other individuals affected by similar conduct. We have also frequently been able to implement meaningful systematic changes to improve the policies and practices at issue, address violations, and prevent future recurrences.

While there have been many highlights over my time at Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, these are among the cases that really stand out:

• We pursued civil rights and wrongful death claims on behalf of the family of a jail inmate who suffered a severe sickle cell crisis while incarcerated. This was a truly heartbreaking and easily preventable tragedy. After jail personnel failed to provide adequate attention and treatment in the facility, the decedent became unresponsive and was transported to a local hospital. He did not significantly improve, and the hospital discharged him back to the jail while accusing him of faking his condition. As a result, he was essentially ignored for the last few days of his life, during which he lost approximately one-quarter of his body weight. The medical examiner determined that he died of severe dehydration and that a simple IV could have saved his life.

Our firm achieved a multi-million-dollar settlement for the family and a study of the medical and correctional practices of the jail.

• Joining forces with two other firms, we represented the tenants of a large apartment complex in lower Manhattan. Because of structural defects in the buildings and shortcuts taken by the landlord, apartment units lacked adequate heat and tenants incurred exorbitant electricity costs to try to get a semblance of relief.
  The case resulted in a multi-million-dollar class settlement and an agreement to make critical structural repairs to address the conditions.
• We pursued California Labor Code claims for violations committed against nurses at an acute psychiatric hospital, one of a chain of similar facilities. We alleged that the owners implemented a barebones staffing model that routinely placed nurses in danger of physical assault and injury. Further, because of short staffing, nurses were deprived of requisite meal breaks and suffered from other related violations.

Once again, we achieved a multi-million-dollar monetary settlement along with a host of measures designed to ameliorate the conditions in the facility. Among these measures, an independent expert conducted a comprehensive analysis and recommended changes in policies and procedures.

• We brought an age discrimination action against a major automobile manufacturer that announced a plan to layoff and replace older workers. Despite the existence of arbitration agreements, we were able to pursue class-based litigation for injunctive relief.

In the case, we successfully negotiated a comprehensive package of measures designed to counteract, root out, and prevent age discrimination at the company along with individual monetary relief for our clients.

In addition to my case work, I have drafted numerous amicus briefs on issues such as same-sex marriage and employment-related matters. I have also written extensively on legal issues, including injustices and inequities within the law. Some topics that I have covered include arbitration jurisprudence, gaps in the law on damages in ADEA cases, and employees’ one-sided duty of loyalty to their employers. It is my hope that my writings will help draw attention to these issues and bring about much-needed reform.

All of these activities are part of my role at Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight as a private attorney general acting in the public interest. I celebrate the firm’s twentieth anniversary and look forward to many great years ahead.