Kerry Garvis Wright

Garvis Wright is a partner and the chair of the employment practice at Glaser Weil. Since the #MeToo movement launched in 2017, she has continued to litigate harassment, discrimination and other employment-based claims, and she has also undertaken significant investigations involving allegations of sexual harassment and other workplace misconduct.

“It was a long and difficult year,” she said of the pandemic fallout, “but rewarding nonetheless.” Sometimes, remote work has had its lighter moments. At one point in a Zoom conference, “someone,” whom Garvis Wright declined to identify further, “at morning break stood up and was seen to be in his or her underwear. A colleague gasped. My client has a wonderful sense of humor and said, ‘Would you want me to tell you if you had broccoli in your teeth?’”

Zoom and other remote platforms may be partly the wave of the future, Garvis Wright believes. “I like that it shows we’re human by sometimes giving a glimpse into our lives, like when my 12-year-old walks into the room during a call to report that his internet’s not working.”

Despite Covid, she added, “I’ve been busy if not busier than ever. No one knew what to do at first, so there was a lot of counseling work. Now, as we emerge, we face new issues like mandatory vaccine policies.”

Garvis Wright said that she and a colleague have focused in part on a nuance she noticed in the rules covering vaccines in the workplace. “The DFEH [Department of Fair Employment and Housing] website says that an employer may impose a policy, but at least in California the vaccine must be FDA approved. But all the current vaccines have emergency use permits only, not formal approval.

“Others look at this issue less from a legal perspective than from one of morale. Currently, there’s a lot of makeshift rules, and I see employers backing away from making things mandatory. There will be test cases on this, I’m sure.”

In a case where the other side challenged an arbitration itself, Garvis Wright represents a company defending against claims by a former employee that he had a 10-year employment agreement plus a partnership agreement that together were worth almost $25 million. After the arbitrator issued an interim award finding in favor of Garvis Wright’s client on all claims, the former employer about-faced and newly claimed that since there was no agreement, the arbitration was a nullity and he was not liable for fees and costs.

“We say that he’s estopped from that claim because he arbitrated to the point of getting an adverse ruling. To us, that’s forum shopping,” Garvis Wright said. “Now we have obtained a ruling against the other side’s motion to terminate. There are a lot of twists here.”

— John Roemer