Jeremy Heisler is Vice-Chairman and a Founding Partner of Sanford Heisler Sharp. In a legal career spanning more than 41 years, he has achieved success in employment, civil rights, and consumer class actions, producing more than $500 million in benefits to class members. Jeremy has established leading employment law precedents and expanded the rights of wrongfully discharged employees. He has prevailed in groundbreaking litigation against some of the largest corporations in the nation. One of his most prominent litigation victories came in In Re Novartis Wage and Hour Litigation when the Second Circuit ruled that sales representatives employed by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation were entitled to overtime pay under federal and state law. Because of that victory, Novartis and the plaintiffs reached a $99 million class-wide settlement, the largest wage and hour settlement in 2012. Additionally, in Velez v. Novartis, he 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 the $28 million settlement in a suit charging that three AT&T subsidiaries wrongfully denied overtime pay to a class of First-Level Managers.
And he was part of the Sanford Heisler Sharp, LLP team that litigated on behalf of a class of women victimized by the voyeur Rabbi Bernard Freundel. The lawsuit arose from Freundel’s secret videotaping of undressed females without their consent during the course of a Jewish religious ceremony. In October 2018, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia granted final approval of the $14.25 million settlement of the class action suit. Most recently, in May 2020, Jeremy helped achieve a $10 million class action settlement on behalf of Manhattan tenants suffering from substandard housing conditions in In Re Gateway Plaza Residents Litigation (Sup. Ct., N.Y.).
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 Sep 2022
