| Biography:
Katharine Parker is a partner in Proskauer Rose LLP's Labor and Employment Department.
Katharine has extensive experience litigating employment disputes of all types, including claims alleging race, age, disability, and sex discrimination; retaliation; sexual harassment; wrongful discharge; violations of wage and hour laws; and breach of contract. She has represented employers in single and multiple plaintiff, collective action, class action, and EEOC pattern and practice cases before federal and state courts and administrative agencies, and in various arbitration forums.
Katharine’s clients regularly call on her to conduct and advise on internal investigations, and to provide advice on compliance with various laws affecting the workplace including the FMLA, ADEA, Title VII, ADA, FLSA, and state wage and hour laws. She has also counseled numerous companies in the planning and execution of reductions-in-force, mergers, and other organizational changes affecting employees.
Complementing her employment practice, Katharine represents employee benefit plans and their fiduciaries and/or service providers in connection with lawsuits arising from single participant benefit claims and class actions. She has litigated the full range of employee benefit-related matters, including claims for medical, long-term disability, and pension benefits, as well as breach of fiduciary duty in connection with the administration of 401(k) and other benefit plans and investments of plan assets.
Representative litigations include:
- Defense of Title VII class action involving claims of race discrimination in promotion and discipline and implementation and defense of claims in complex settlement claims process
- Defense of alleged fiduciary in major ERISA class action arising out of investment in company stock
- Defense of trustees of several multiemployer welfare plans in complex ERISA class action involving claims of breach of fiduciary duty
- Defense of multi-plaintiff ERISA action involving alleged breaches of fiduciary duty and benefit claims arising out of change in severance policy
- Defense of various companies in single and multi-plaintiff age, religious, sexual harassment and gender discrimination claims
- Defense of management in complex interest arbitration
- Defense of employer in three related complex NYSE arbitrations involving claims of breach of contract, promissory estoppel, negligent hiring, and management
Katharine speaks and writes on a variety of topics, including the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act, glass ceiling litigation, Title VII, ethics in employment law, ADA, FLSA, whistleblowing laws, internal investigations, and the FMLA. She also conducts management training with regard to EEO and antiharassment laws, as well as hiring, evaluating, and terminating employees. In addition, she has taught classes on glass ceiling issues for Cornell University's extension program and currently serves as an adjunct professor of employment law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. She has appeared on Fox News and WCBS News, and was awarded membership in the Academy of Women Achievers of the YWCA of New York City. Katharine has also been recognized as one of New York’s “Super Lawyers.”
Katharine is active in the New York City Bar Association and was one of the principal drafters of a report on the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act. She is currently a member of the Labor and Employment Committee. She is a member of the ABA, the Federal Bar Council and the New York State Bar Associations.
Katharine earned her bachelor's degree, cum laude, from Duke University, and her law degree from Fordham Law School, cum laude. At Fordham, she was elected to the Order of the Coif and she served as a notes and articles editor for the Fordham Law Review. She joined the Firm following a judicial clerkship with the Honorable Warren W. Eginton in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.
Katharine is a member of the New York and Connecticut Bars and is admitted to practice in the District of Connecticut, the Northern, Southern, Western and Eastern Districts of New York, and the First, Second, Third, Sixth and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals.
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