Michele L. Maryott

Maryott envisions a time when a good party icebreaker will be to recount your most embarrassing Zoom moment. Among her personal favorites: when her five-year-old daughter, fully costumed as Simba the Lion King, leapt onto the couch behind her and gave a full-throated roar. "I've learned to keep a finger hovering over the mute button, so I pressed it, roared back, and kept going," she said.

The Gibson Dunn partner has persevered for clients, too. In a practice focused on complex business litigation with an emphasis on employment matters, she has in the past year defended clients in three potential employment class actions where the plaintiffs have abandoned their class certification efforts.

"We do joke that I scare them off with my fearsome manner, but the reasons why plaintiffs have given up on class certification in these cases are not always clear," Maryott said. "It's rare to have three in a year."

In one high-profile matter, she represents Morrison & Foerster LLP in what was originally a potential class action alleging gender and pregnancy discrimination against associates and of counsel attorneys. The court granted Maryott's motion for judgment on the pleadings as to claims asserted by two of the plaintiffs. The law firm resolved the claims of several other of the named plaintiffs. The remaining plaintiffs, following discovery, ended their effort to obtain class certification of any claims, leaving only the individual claims of two plaintiffs. Doe v. Morrison & Foerster, 3:18-cv-02542 (N.D. Cal., filed April 30, 2018).

"We didn't push the plaintiffs to give up," Maryott said. "They just figured out on their own that the individuals they sought to represent were not representative of the views of others. There are a lot of extremely successful women at Morrison & Foerster. The result would have been the same anyway, we think."

Maryott is co-lead counsel in a series of potential wage and hour, discrimination and representative actions against Amazon.com LLC in California. In one of them, the plaintiffs dropped class certification efforts in June 2020. Sherman v. Amazon.com Services LLC, 8:19-cv-01329 (C.D. Cal., filed June 6, 2019). In a separate disability and age discrimination case, Maryott and her team recently received the plaintiffs' agreement not to seek class certification and to proceed only on individual claims. Johnson v. Amazon.com Services Inc., 8:19-cv-00711 (C.D. Cal., filed April 15, 2019).

She won another potential class action outright for Amazon. The plaintiff alleged a misclassification claim; the court in April 2020 concluded that individualized issues predominate and denied cert. Ortiz v. Amazon.com LLC, 4:17-cv-03820 (N.D. Cal., filed July 5, 2017).

"Ortiz was a great victory," Maryott said. "The scope of the class changed overnight."

-- John Roemer