David J. Reis

As a young man, Reis played professional sports. After playing baseball in college, he joined the minor leagues for the Atlanta Braves while attending Columbia Law School in the off-season.

Law ultimately won out, of course, but his background in baseball got Reis interested in sports law and the interaction between sports unions and management. Now he’s come full circle, representing sports teams such as the Oakland Raiders as head of his firm’s labor and employment practice group.

In recent years, Reis has served as lead counsel on highly publicized class actions brought by the Raiders’ cheerleaders, the Raiderettes, alleging wage and hour claims. Reis settled one case for $1.25 million, covering 90 plaintiffs over a four-year period. Lacy T. v. The Oakland Raiders, A144707 (Cal. App. 1st Dist. Dec. 13, 2016).

Then two copycat class actions added the NFL to the complaint, along with an antitrust claim. Reis got the class claims dismissed, and the individual cases are proceeding in arbitration before JAMS.

Reis also represented the Raiders in an antitrust class action against the NFL and various teams, alleging that the teams conspired with each other and the NFL to keep cheerleader pay artificially low. Kelsey K. v. NFL Enterprises et al., 3:17-cv-00496 (N.D. Cal., filed January 31, 2017). The defendants recently won a motion to dismiss.

“It’s been quite a long odyssey. It started as a wage and hour issue, and those were quickly resolved. Now it has morphed into three claims involving antitrust allegations,” Reis said. “There’s very little basis for it, which is why the complaint was completely dismissed.”

Reis said his previous experience as a baseball player, and the fact that he grew up in a union household, allows him to see things from the other side.

“It helps in counseling employers to take a different perspective, that we’re not always absolutely right and the other side is always wrong,” he said. “We need to see some legitimacy in their position, too. In any situation in life, it helps to try to look at things from the other side.”

— Jennifer Chung Klam