Natalie R. Alameddine  

Natalie R. Alameddine’s credentials as a management-side labor and employment partner at Blank Rome LLP include work as a law clerk for judges at the National Labor Relations Board and a legal associate’s post for the Employment Law Center. She joined the firm in 2017.

Last year, she was selected as a Daily Journal Top 40 Under 40 honoree. Her identical twin, Amanda T. Alameddine, is a trademark associate at Fenwick & West LLP.

“We are the first attorneys in our family,” Natalie Alameddine said. “When we were young, sometimes we’d bicker and argue and my dad would be the judge. That put the idea of being lawyers into our heads.”

Their parents are from Iran and Lebanon. Natalie Alameddine is a board member of the Arab American Lawyers Association of Southern California. In her active pro bono practice, she led Blank Rome’s Afghan refugee project; she aided an Afghan female judge and her family, who managed to escape Afghanistan, among others.

“The judge and her family are now in a UAE refugee camp,” Alameddine said. “It’s frustrating that they haven’t made it to the U.S. yet.”

In her employment law practice, Alameddine, in late June, obtained a dismissal with prejudice after she demurred to employment and other claims filed by a leasing agent against her client, Lennar Homes of California LLC and other defendants. Wilmore v. Greystar Management Services LP et al., 22STCV38467 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Dec. 9, 2022).

Her demurrer accused the plaintiff of “sloppily” and inaccurately including Lennar in harassment and retaliation causes of action even though Lennar was not his employer. And Wilmore’s premises liability claim was based on an assault and attempted robbery at an apartment complex that Lennar had sold months earlier, Alameddine pointed out. Superior Court Judge Stephen I. Goovitch agreed, eliminating Lennar from the roster of defendants.

Meanwhile, Alameddine leads a Blank Rome team representing packaged ice manufacturer Arctic Glacier Inc. in a representative PAGA suit and a statewide wage and hour class action. Both are pending in San Bernardino County Superior Court.

And she is a predominant employment counsel for the largest domestic auto and electric bus manufacturer in China, BYD Coach & Bus LLC and BYD America LLC. In a class action filed last year, Alameddine secured dismissal in its entirety, prevented the filing of a PAGA suit and successfully settled the remaining claims on an individual basis. Mullins v. BYD America LLC, 22STCV04119 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed Feb. 2, 2022).

“I truly enjoy this work,” Alameddine said. “I love what I do.”

—John Roemer