PRACTICE AREAS

• Represent business entities in handling all facets of their employment matters, including contract negotiations, labor arbitrations, NLRB proceedings, discrimination charges and suits, and worker`s compensation claims. Works on a daily basis with human resource personnel and in-house counsel to solve and prevent problems in the employment arena. Clients assisted on a regular basis include  Towne Air Freight, LLC., Ashley Industrial Molding, Inc., Key Fasteners, Steel Dynamics Inc., OmniSource Corp. and Colwell General, Inc.
  
  

• Mediator with an emphasis in labor and employment matters. Experienced in other areas includes business and corporate litigation, personal injury and property damage claims,  and contract disputes through mediation.  

• Admitted to practice before Indiana state courts, United States District Court for the Northern and Southern Districts of Indiana, Ohio state courts, United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

• Represented hundreds of supervisor training sessions throughout the United States.
• Emphasis in the transportation and manufacturing sector including extensive practice and representation of business entities with Union workers.
• Extensive strike activity experience, including defending unfair labor practices and 10j injunction. Defended hundreds of unemployment claims by striking workers, handled contempt charges brought against individuals and local Unions. Handled litigation to cease property destruction at the striked facilities and the physical threat of harm to management individuals and temporary replacement workers
• Extensive trial experience defending employers in all areas of employment decisions, including a case in the Seventh Circuit regarding FMLA (Diaz vs. Ft. Wayne Foundry Corp., 131 F.3d 711 (Seventh Circuit, 1997))

REPRESENTATIVE MATTERS

• Represented a regional corporation in the termination of their President, who was believed to have been mishandling company assets.
• Defended drug testing policy of a company through jury trial.
• Represented numerous manufacturing facilities during downsizing negotiations with Unions.
• Partnered with clients to handle Union election campaigns in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan; and decertification elections in Ohio and Indiana.

PROFESSIONAL INVOLVEMENT

• Presented more than 150 speeches and/or seminars ranging from local seminars for the National Business Institute, and the Counsel on Education in Management, to participating in nationwide seminars including the Defense Research Institute`s Seminar on Litigation
  • Presenter, Fundamentals of Employment Law, December 4, 2012, Fort Wayne, Indiana
• Martindale-Hubbell`s "AV® Preeminent TM" Peer Review Rating*
• Member of the Allen County, Indiana, and Ohio Bar Associations
• Fellow, Indiana Bar Foundation
• Selected for inclusion in Super Lawyers in America publication in the practice area of Labor & Employment in 2005, 2006, and 2007

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

• Board of Directors, Hope House (2010-current)
• Fort Wayne Mad Anthony Member (2007-current)
• Board of Directors, Blue Jacket, Inc. (2011-current)
• Past Board of Directors, McMillen Health Center, President (2008- 2009); Vice President (2003-2007)
• Past Chair, Science Central, Inc. Board of Directors (member, 1994-2009),Executive Board member (1996-2002), Board Member (2007-2009)
• United Way Corporate Campaign Chair (2007-2008)
• East Allen County Schools Strategic Task Force (2008-2009)
• Past Chair, Allen County Bar Association, Labor Section

EDUCATION

• University of Notre Dame Law School (J.D., 1988)
• University of Toledo (B.B.A., Finance, 1985)

SEMINARS

• Social Media Summit, July 18, 2012, Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce, "Your employes and SocialMedia- what legal rights do you have?"

* AV® Preeminent TM is a certification mark of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc., used in accordance with the Martindale-Hubbell certification procedures, standards and policies. The AV rating is a testament to the fact that a lawyer`s peers rank him or her at the highest level of professional excellence.