David Sanford

David Sanford is the Chairman and Co-Founder of Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, a nationally recognized litigation firm focused on civil rights, employment, whistleblower, ERISA, and public interest matters. He represents clients across the employment spectrum, from C-suite executives and general counsel to hourly workers, and has served as lead counsel in more than 50 class actions and numerous qui tam and whistleblower cases nationwide. He has represented more than 100 attorneys and hundreds of professionals in sectors such as technology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, education, and finance in contract disputes, discrimination matters, and severance negotiations.

David secured the largest gender discrimination verdict in U.S. employment history in Velez v. Novartis, obtaining a $253 million jury verdict on behalf of 7,000 women. The United Nations recognized the case as a top ten global advancement in women’s rights, and David later addressed the U.N. regarding its impact.

David's record includes a $19.5 million Qualcomm settlement, a $14.25 million class recovery for women secretly recorded during religious rituals, a seven-figure verdict against Columbia University, and a $69 million ERISA settlement against UnitedHealth Group. He also served as lead counsel in a high-profile gender discrimination matter involving Robert De Niro’s production company, securing a jury award of $1.2 million.

In 2024, David achieved a landmark Maryland Supreme Court decision in the Adnan Syed case, securing constitutional rights for crime victims to receive notice, appear, and be heard in post-conviction proceedings.

He has been named to Forbes’ “America’s Top 200 Lawyers,” Benchmark Litigation’s Employment Attorney of the Year, The National Law Journal’s Elite Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame, and has been nationally ranked by Chambers USA. He lectures at leading institutions including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and NYU, and frequently appears in national media as a legal commentator.

Updated Oct 2025

• Representative Matter: Vacatur Proceedings in the Murder of Hae Min Lee (Adnan Syed Case) We represented Young Lee, brother of murder victim Hae Min Lee, after the State of Maryland moved to vacate Adnan Syed’s conviction without notice to Mr. Lee and without producing new evidence on the record. We challenged the vacatur process and successfully appealed to the Maryland Supreme Court, which issued a landmark ruling affirming victims’ rights to reasonable notice, in-person participation, and meaningful input in vacatur proceedings. The State later withdrew its motion after acknowledging it contained “false and misleading statements.” This decision reshaped victims’ rights jurisprudence in Maryland and established a national model.
  
  
• Kim Snyder v. UnitedHealth Group (ERISA Class Action) Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight served as Class Counsel representing more than 350,000 retirement plan participants alleging ERISA fiduciary breaches for retaining long-underperforming target date funds. After four years of litigation, the firm obtained final approval of a $69 million settlement, the largest single-plan ERISA settlement involving failure to remove imprudent investment options. The court granted attorneys’ fees and a service award. The result surpassed a prior $61 million recovery the firm achieved in In re G.E. ERISA Litig., reinforcing the firm’s national leadership in fiduciary duty enforcement and retirement plan litigation.
  
  
• Sabic-El-Rayess v. Teachers College, Columbia University David Sanford, as lead counsel, represents Dr. Amra Sabic-El-Rayess, a Muslim professor and Bosnian genocide survivor, in a $10 million religious and age discrimination lawsuit alleging denial of tenure-track opportunities despite nationally recognized scholarship and federal grants. The case highlights an alleged pattern of exclusion of Muslim faculty. In December 2024, the firm defeated the College’s motion to dismiss, allowing religious discrimination and retaliation claims to proceed in the Southern District of New York.
  
  
• Velazquez v. University of Miami Miller School of Medicine David Sanford represents Dr. Omaida Velazquez, the first Latina Chair of Surgery at a major U.S. medical school, in a lawsuit alleging race, gender, and national origin discrimination and retaliation after reporting unequal pay and safety violations. In September 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida rejected most of the University’s dismissal arguments, allowing the case to proceed. The lawsuit seeks reinstatement, back and front pay, compensatory damages, and punitive damages.
  
  
• Representative Matter: Hedgepeth v. Garland (U.S. Marshals Service Race Discrimination Class Action)  David Sanford, as Lead Counsel, led a nearly 30-year class action before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of more than 700 current and former African American Deputy U.S. Marshals, and thousands of Black candidates who were denied hire, alleging systemic race discrimination in promotions, hiring, and headquarters assignments. In June 2024, the EEOC granted final approval of a $15 million settlement—the largest race discrimination class resolution in the agency’s history against a federal law enforcement entity.

• Class action
• Labor and employment
• Plaintiff
• Civil Rights

• Financial services
• Government and public policy
• Healthcare
• Media
• Pharmaceutical and life sciences
• Technology and telecommunications

• Juris Doctorate (J.D.) - Stanford University - 1995
• Bachelor's Degree - Vassar College - 1980
• Master's Degree - University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill - 1988

• New York - 2019
• District of Columbia - 1998
• Maryland - 1997