December 9, 2015 (NEW YORK) – Proskauer Labor & Employment partner Elise Bloom was profiled by Law360 as one of its 2015 Employment MVPs of the Year. Elise is a member of Proskauer’s Executive Committee, co-head of the Class/Collective Actions Group (with Mark Batten) and former co-chair of the Labor & Employment Law Department.
The profile described the major victories she and her teams won for Fox Searchlight Pictures, longtime Firm client Major League Baseball (MLB) and Coca-Cola Refreshments USA in the past year. All were complex cases that involved thorny legal issues, and two — for Fox Searchlight and MLB — resulted in precedent-setting decisions.
The Fox Searchlight case (widely known as the “Black Swan” case) was a class action brought by unpaid interns seeking to be considered employees and, thus, paid for their work. Elise and team (including Mark Batten, Mark Harris and Josh Fox) devised a new standard for evaluating the legality of unpaid internships that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit adopted in its entirety.
In commenting on the groundbreaking decision, Elise told Law360 that "We believed innately that unpaid internships provide a value to the intern and that through an internship you can get an educational experience that you can't otherwise get in the classroom. There may also be a benefit the employer receives simultaneously, but if you weigh [the two], the primary beneficiary of the experience is going to be the intern."
MVPs are lawyers judged by Law360 to have had the biggest wins and made the most significant contributions to their practice groups in the past year. Law360 also has named Proskauer partner Brad Ruskin a 2015 MVP, in its Sports category.