Legal Series for 2011: Common Discovery Issues in Employment Litigation

With over twelve years of experience, Stewart has worked with numerous enterprise customers to design, deploy, and support email and file archiving solutions for regulatory compliance and eDiscovery objectives. As the Chief Technology Officer at Nuix, Stewart is responsible for evolving Nuix’s forensic technologies into a leading solution in the eDiscovery and corporate investigation markets. Stewart previously worked at ESI Strategies, the consulting division of RVM, was the Subject Matter Expert for Discovery and Archiving at CommVault and spent seven years at EMC enabling customers to build processes to effectively respond to electronic discovery requests. Stewart is a frequent speaker in both the legal and IT communities regarding the challenges of e-mail archiving, discovery and data management..

Ms. Field represents management in all aspects of employment-related state and federal litigation, from initial stages of allegations through government and internal investigations, discovery and litigation. Her representative experience includes wage and hour issues (compensation, commissions, bonuses, meal/rest break claims, and exemption misclassification, on individual and class-wide bases), wrongful termination and breach of contract, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, whistle-blowing, and defamation. Ms. Field also provides advice and counseling to top management and HR on state and federal employment laws, company policies, and employee disputes and investigations, including issues relating to compensation, exemptions, commissions, and bonus plans, competitive hiring, arbitration and non-competition agreements, contractor issues, discrimination or retaliation complaints, reductions in force, employment handbooks and policies, record-keeping, and executive and staff-level employment and severance agreements.

Kenneth Gage is a partner in the Paul Hastings Employment practice. He represents employers in a wide range of federal and state employment litigation matters. He handles a wide range of employment matters from pre-litigation counseling through trials and appeals. His litigation experience includes defendants’ verdicts in several jury trials involving age, race, and sex discrimination claims, retaliation claims, and state common law claims, as well as numerous summary judgment rulings. Mr. Gage tried a state wage-and-hour class action to a defendant’s verdict. He has successfully defeated class certification in a pattern and practice race discrimination case under Title VII, as well as conditional certification in federal wage and hour cases. He has successfully argued several appeals in state and federal courts. In addition, with his extensive litigation experience, Mr. Gage regularly counsels employers on litigation avoidance and best practices.

Mr. Gage is listed in the 2006 and 2007 editions of Chambers USA America’s Leading Lawyers for Business. He received his B.S. degree from the University at Buffalo (cum laude) in 1988 and his J.D. degree from the University of Buffalo in 1991. He is admitted to practice in state and federal courts in Connecticut, Illinois, and New York, federal district court in the Eastern District of Michigan, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Sixth and Seventh circuits and the U.S. Supreme Court. After law school, he served as law clerk to the Honorable Thomas J. McAvoy, then-chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

Don Kohtz is the managing director of Legal Solutions at Continuum Worldwide.

Don has presented, published, and consulted on the topics of electronic discovery (eDiscovery) and electronically stored information (ESI) matters; litigation readiness; legal considerations with social media; digital & computer forensics; best practices for first responders collecting electronic evidence; cell phone forensics; insurance fraud; internal investigations; risk mitigation; and compliance matters.

Don holds a Bachelor of Science degree, a Doctorate of Jurisprudence, and is certified as a HIPAA Professional (HIPPAP). He is a member of the Nebraska and Missouri state Bar Associations. He is also licensed and practices in the state and federal U.S. District Courts in the states of Nebraska and Missouri, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court of the United States of America.