David Sanford is the Chairman and co-founder of Sanford Heisler Sharp LLP. He has served as lead counsel in more than 50 employment class actions around the country and has represented scores of general counsel and attorneys in employment matters. He also represents C-suite executives and non-managerial hourly employees from coast to coast. David has recovered more than one billion dollars for individual clients through trials and settlements and for the U.S. government under the False Claims Act statute over the past 15 years.
David has brought gender discrimination class actions against BigLaw, including Jones Day, Ogletree, MoFo, Chadbourne, Proskauer, and Sedgwick. His innovative approach of filing employment claims under the Equal Pay Act, state and city Civil and Human Rights Acts, and/or the California Labor Code’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) has been influential in discrimination and class litigation.
David has also brought Title IX and Equal Pay Act cases against universities, including Columbia, Yale, Dartmouth, NYU and the University of Arizona.
In 2010, David was lead counsel for a class of women pharmaceutical sales representatives against a major pharma giant. After a six-week trial in federal court in New York, the jury returned a verdict of $253 million. Today it still stands as the largest gender employment discrimination class action verdict in the U.S.
Recently, David tried and won the first “Me Too” case tried in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in a gender discrimination matter against Columbia University.
David was inducted in The National Law Journal’s Elite Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame; was an American Lawyer 2018 Attorney of the Year finalist; was twice a Benchmark Litigation Employment Attorney of the Year; a Law 360 Employment MVP and Titan of the Plaintiffs Bar, and a National Law Journal Plaintiffs’ Trailblazer. He is ranked in Band 1 by Chambers as a Leader in the field for Labor & Employment for the past four years. David has also been AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell for the past 17 years and is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
David has been chairman of the Firm since 2012, during which the Firm has been recognized as the National Law Journal Civil Rights Firm of the Year (2022), Employment Rights Firm of the Year (2021) and Human Rights Firm of the Year (2021); Benchmark Litigation’s Labor and Employment Firm of the Year (2020 & 2021); nationally ranked by Chambers & Partners since 2016; nationally ranked by U.S. News since 2016; and for many years has been recognized by Law360 as Employment Practice Group of the Year.
Updated Sep 2022
