Kalijarvi, Chuzi, Newman & Fitch, P.C., is pleased to announce that attorney Heidi R. Burakiewicz has joined the firm as a Partner, Stephanie Bryant Holland has joined the firm as Of Counsel, and Robert DePriest has joined the firm as an Associate.
Burakiewicz, Holland, and DePriest have an established practice representing federal employees and their unions in overtime pay, wage and hour violations, free speech and association rights, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and Privacy Act claims.
Burakiewicz is lead counsel in Martin et al. v. U.S., a collective action on behalf of over 25,000 federal employees in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. In a July 2014 ruling, the Court determined that the government violated the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) by failing to pay the essential employees whom it required to work during the October 2013 shutdown on their regularly scheduled pay dates. In a February 2017 ruling, the court ruled that the government is liable for liquidated damages to the essential employees because it did not act in good faith.
Burakiewicz is also lead counsel in White et al. v. Sessions, a class action on behalf of over 500 female employees of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Coleman, Florida, alleging that the government failed to take steps to prevent inmates from egregiously sexually harassing them. The case settled in December 2016 for $20 million dollars and a long list of negotiated changes designed to eradicate the sexual harassment. The judge described the outcome as “impressive by any standard” in the January 17, 2017 decision preliminarily approving the settlement.
Biographies of Burakiewicz, Holland, and DePriest are available here.
“We are so pleased to have Heidi R. Burakiewicz, Stephanie Bryant Holland, and Robert DePriest join us,” said Elaine Fitch, Managing Partner of KCNF. “Their practice is a national leader in ground-breaking federal sector compliance with wage and hour and other employment protections.”
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