FAA Arbitration Exception: Impact of Flowers Food v. Brock on Businesses Transporting Goods in Interstate Commerce

Ms. Fellows is a Partner and Office Co-Chair in the Pittsburgh office of Freeman Mathis & Gary, LLP and a member of the firm’s Labor & Employment Law practice section. She actively contributes to many interdisciplinary teams at FMG that focus on employment law matters. She is also Co-Chair of the Northeast Employment practice team. Ms. Fellows has spent her entire legal career focusing her practice on various aspects of workplace law, having represented and advised management clients in the area of labor and employment law for nearly twenty-five years. She regularly defends employers in state and federal court litigation and administrative proceedings arising out of all aspects of the employment relationship. Ms. Fellows litigation practice includes providing representation to employers in both single-plaintiff and class action matters involving claims relating to discrimination, retaliation, employment at-will, restrictive covenants, wrongful discharge, protected leaves of absence, breach of contract, defamation, ERISA-related issues, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud before various judicial and administrative tribunals, including federal and state courts throughout Pennsylvania and West Virginia and government agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and the City of Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations. She also has extensive experience representing employers in state and federal wage and hour class and collective action litigation. In addition to her litigation defense practice, Ms. Fellows also has specialized expertise in a wide array of employee relations and human resources issues.

Mr. Ward is a trial lawyer and labor and employment attorney representing employers throughout the country. He focuses on wage and hour and privacy-related class action litigation, high-stakes jury and bench trials, labor relations counseling, litigation, arbitration, and collective bargaining. Mr. Ward has extensive experience representing employers in the aviation, transportation, manufacturing, hospitality, and health care industries. He is a partner in the firm’s Labor & Employment Practice. Mr. Ward has a wealth of first-chair trial and appellate counsel experience and has tried multiple employment cases to full defense verdicts in the California state and federal courts. As a class action lawyer, he has extensive experience defending “bet the company” matters and has designed and implemented complex and aggressive strategies that resulted in successful outcomes at class certification and on-the-merits judgments for the employer against novel theories of law. Mr. Ward is also a leading attorney in the design, implementation, and usage of arbitration agreements with class action waivers, and has successfully enforced dozens of such agreements against efforts to resist them in California class action litigation.