Won biggest gender discrimination case in U.S. history
New York (TrustLaw)—David Sanford didn’t start out his professional career as an attorney but in 2010 he led the legal team that won the largest jury verdict in a gender bias employment class action suit in history.
Filed against pharmaceutical giant Novartis, the case not only won over $400 million in compensation for gender discrimination against its female sales representatives, but forced the company to institute sweeping human resources reforms costing some $22.5 million and opened the door to future gender bias suits.
The case, Velez v. Novartis, was cited as one of the 10 top cases in the world to positively impact women’s rights in UN Women’s newly released report, “Progress of the World’s Women 2011-2012: In Pursuit of Justice.”
Although the firm Sanford founded -- Sanford Wittels & Heisler -- has handled gender bias cases against such companies as Cigna, Bayer, Toshiba and Publicis, the Novartis case made history in terms of the size of its class and the jury verdict.
“I think there were two keys,” Sanford said of the case during a panel discussion at the Ford Foundation. “The first and most significant was the group of women who came together,” he said, describing the 12 plaintiffs and the more than 6,000 current and former female employees they represented.
Moreover, he cited the “courage” of the 108 Novartis women employees who risked dismissal or other forms of retaliation for signing depositions detailing the discrimination they experienced. They testified to company indifference to reports of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, by doctors and lower pay scales for women, fewer promotions and punishment, up to dismissal, for those who became pregnant.
In terms of discrimination, Sanford said, “We have made a lot of progress in the society since I was growing up but it still exists. It’s gone underground, for the most part. It seeps up from the ground. That’s why it’s so important that we do what we do.”
These days Sanford is furious at the recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to allow a gender bias class action suit by Wal-Mart employees to proceed because it ruled the class was too varied in terms of locations and job descriptions.
“It fires me up because someone has got to continue doing this. You can’t get one bad ruling from the Supreme Court and run for the hills,” he told TrustLaw, after speaking at the United Nations for the launch of the new report.
Among the things that bother him the most about that case, he said, is that “at best it’s an appearance problem” that speaks to him of “ethical impropriety.” Specifically, he is troubled by the fact that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s son Eugene is a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. That law firm, where Eugene Scalia chairs the Labor and Employment practice group, represented Wal-Mart in its appeal of the Ninth Circuit decision affirming a lower court’s certifying the class of about 1.5 million employees in the Dukes v. Wal-Mart case.
Had Antonin Scalia recused himself from the case before the high court, Sanford said, the result would have been 4-4 instead of 5-4.
Nonetheless, he said the case will go forward, albeit with plaintiffs grouping themselves into smaller classes.
Sanford, 54, taught philosophy of law at Williams College, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Oberlin before entering Stanford Law School at the age of 35 and graduating in 1995.
In 2004, he became a founding and managing partner of Sanford Wittels & Heisler, a national law firm specializing in civil rights and public interest cases, including discrimination, labor and wage violations, predatory lending, whistleblower, consumer fraud and other issues involving employment law.
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