Polsinelli has maintained a commitment to upholding its labor and employment practice, seen recently in its aggressive growth and expansion in the area. While the firm continues to deepen its bench and expand its team across Denver, Los Angeles and Dallas, theKansas City office maintains its title as the firm’s stronghold.
Denise Drake, chair of the labor and employment practice, is among the firm’s leading, Missouri-basedlitigators.Drake is a leader through and through – leading the practice, the expansion, and clients in their disputes. She has been consistently distinguished as a Labor & Employment Star since its inception, maintaining the status with a roster of notable class action disputes.
New additions to the rankings this year include Los Angeles-based litigator September Rea and Dallas’ Angelo Spinola. While Rea’s practice involves the full spectrum of employment litigation, she is especially active in class action disputes arising under federal and California laws, such as the California Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA). Rea is defending clients in a series of putative wage and hour class actions, and individual-plaintiff disputes. In separate but related disputes, she represented a client before the California Labor Commissioner as plaintiffs. Spinola specializes in handling labor and employment disputes on behalf of clients in the home health industry, particularly hospice and homecare companies. He recently resolved alawsuit defending Bluebird Homecare of Alabama against a plaintiff alleging violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) challenging the company’s alleged practice of not including certain nondiscretionary bonuses in the regular rate when calculating overtime pay. Spinola is handling several other FLSA cases involving the healthcare industry, including two with Colorado-based litigator Donald Samuels on the team. Samuels heads the firm’s employment litigation, arbitration and dispute resolution group.
