Jeremy Heisler is Co-Vice Chairman and a Founding Partner of Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight. In a legal career spanning more than 41 years, he has successfully represented individuals and classes in matters involving gender discrimination, wage and hour disputes, sexual harassment, civil rights, and consumer fraud. In addition to amassing more than $500 million in awards and settlements on behalf of plaintiff classes, Jeremy has established leading employment law precedents and expanded the rights of wrongfully discharged employees, and has prevailed in groundbreaking litigation against some of the largest corporations in the nation.
One of his most prominent litigation victories came when the Second Circuit ruled that sales representatives employed by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation were entitled to overtime pay under federal and state law. The Appellate Court ruling led to Novartis and the plaintiffs reaching a $99 million class-wide settlement, one of the largest-ever settlements of a wage and hour case.
Additionally, in Velez v. Novartis, Jeremy won class certification for a group of female sales representatives who alleged that their employer engaged in gender discrimination. A jury ultimately returned a $250 million verdict against the company—the largest gender discrimination award in United States history.
Jeremy was instrumental in spearheading a $28 million settlement resulting from a wage and hour class action filed on behalf of AT&T managers in multiple states who were wrongfully denied overtime pay. And he was part of the Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight team that litigated on behalf of a class of women who were videotaped without their consent by Rabbi Bernard Freundel. The lawsuit arose from Freundel’s secret videotaping of women as they used the Jewish ritual bath at the National Capital Mikvah in Washington, DC. In October 2018, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia granted final approval of a $14.25 million settlement. In October 2019, Jeremy helped achieve a $10 million class action settlement in the Supreme Court of New York on behalf of Manhattan tenants suffering from substandard housing conditions (In Re Gateway Plaza Residents Litigation). Jeremy was part of the Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight team that represented Graham Chase Robinson in her civil lawsuit against actor Robert De Niro and his company, Canal Productions, where a jury found Canal liable for gender discrimination and retaliation and awarding the plaintiff $1.26 million in damages.
Jeremy also co-authored an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of women’s rights organizations in Mach Mining v. Equal Opportunity Commission (2015), a major decision on whether federal courts should review the EEOC’s methods of dispute resolution in discrimination cases.
In December 2018, Jeremy authored an amicus brief to the New York Court of Appeals and succeeded in having the Court significantly liberalize the standards for granting class certification under New York’s class action rule (Andryeyeva v. New York Health Care, Inc.).
Updated Oct 2024
