Employment Law Results

In 2004, Ed Buckley won a $1,060,000.00 verdict against Kennesaw State University in a sex discrimination and retaliation case. Our client was a professor of music. The jury found the university guilty of sex discrimination and retaliation when it promoted a far less qualified male to the position of Chair of the Music Department.

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In early 2005, Buckley Beal won a total of $1,045,000.00 in an arbitration brought on behalf of a stockbroker against the Smith Barney Brokerage firm. The case was originally part of the "Boom Boom Room" class action litigation, in which Smith Barney was accused of a nationwide pattern of sex discrimination and harassment. Buckley Beal represented three former Smith Barney female stockbrokers in separate arbitrations arising from the class action.

In early 2007, the firm recovered just over $280,000.00 in back pay, benefits, and attorney's fees in an age discrimination case. The employer also unconditionally offered to reinstate our client to his job as Vice President of Marketing and Sales.

In the summer of 2008, we obtained more than $65,000 for a client in a sexual discrimination case against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Most of the award was for the client's emotional distress arising out of the defendant's failure to promote our client to a position for which she was more qualified than the male that was selected.

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In late 2006, the firm won a jury verdict of $2.25 million in a sexual harassment case against an Atlanta-based chain of sports bars and its principal shareholder. Our client was the company's highest-placed female officer. The firm's trial team was led by Ed Buckley and included Dena George.

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Two years after Fulton County lost a reverse discrimination case in federal court, the county has paid three white former employees $3.5 million in damages.

Atlanta attorney Edward D. Buckley III, a partner at Buckley Beal, said the county paid the judgment on June 30, less than three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court denied, without comment, Fulton's petition for a writ of certiorari. Fulton County v. Lambert, No. 01-1568 (U.S June 10, 2002).

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In 2003, the firm won a major victory on behalf of employees subject to unfair "non-compete" agreements. Georgia law requires strict scrutiny of these agreements and Georgia courts often bar employers from trying to enforce them. In Hostetler v. AnswerThink, the Georgia court of appeals held that Georgia courts have the power to prohibit former employers from trying to enforce invalid agreements throughout the United States, not just in Georgia. The Hostetler decison gives Georgia employees vital protection from "end run" efforts to enforce invalid non-compete agreements by filing lawsuits in other states.