We accept and appreciate referrals of employment law cases anywhere in Florida or Georgia.

We’ve set this page up chiefly for lawyers who want to refer employment cases to me. But a secondary purpose is to help lawyers who don’t ordinarily handle employment cases, but have accepted one and need our expertise to answer a question or share thoughts.

I am a career employee rights lawyer. I represent employees only – no employers – across Florida and Georgia. I handle no other kinds of cases.

I’ve limited my firm’s practice to employment law for more than three decades, and have one of the heaviest practices in the United States. I have personally appeared as lead counsel in more than 1,000 federal employment discrimination cases, and in more than 1,000 state cases. In contrast, the typical labor and employment lawyer appears in about 250 cases over the course of their career.  (You can easily check a lawyer’s federal court experience by running their name in the Advanced Party search on PACER. Since many employment cases are removed to federal court, it’s a good gauge of the lawyer’s actual employment-law experience.) Our high-volume practice has giving me a deep pool of experience – in claims, defenses, judges, defendants, negotiating tactics, and litigation strategies and tactics – to draw on. There is literally no issue we haven’t encountered, no twist we haven’t confronted.

I have authored numerous articles and books on legal issues. They include the best-selling 10,000 Depositions Later: The Premier Litigation Guide for Superior Deposition Practice, 3d Ed. (Ross & Rubin Publishers, 2019), now at 450 pages; books on closing arguments, and field guides specific to deposition issues, such as expert witnesses and Fed.R.Civ.P. 30(b)(6) representative depositions. I operate an online website, JimGarrityOnline.com, where I frequently post columns for employees on their rights, and also many of my case outcomes.  I also run a Facebook page for lawyers on new deposition cases and strategies.  You can find my twice-weekly podcast, 10,000 Depositions Later Podcast, on deposition strategies and tactics, available on Apple, Spotify, Google, and many other sites.  Or you can go straight to the podcast’s home page, by clicking here.

For most lawyers, dabbling in employment law is a dangerous thing.  We often get calls from lawyers that have strayed outside their fields and taken an employment case, and they’re already in deep trouble. Some examples:

• A personal injury lawyer called to ask if we thought he erred in dismissing his client’s case against a state entity, after the defense lawyer cited cases saying the entity was immune from the claims he filed. In fact, dismissal was a grievous error. The entity was only immune from certain types of damages, not from the claim as a whole.  The claims had real value. But it was too late to fix it.  His client’s case had been dismissed with prejudice on a misleading legal argument by the opponent.
• In another instance, a lawyer told a potential client that because more than one year had passed since the client had been fired, it was too late to file a race discrimination claim. That’s wrong.  What the lawyer did not know is that there is an 1866 civil rights statute, not often used, that has a four-year statute of limitations. We took the case, filed a and settled it for six figures.  We could have also used a local county ordinance, that actually had more teeth to it than the state or federal civil rights laws.
• Many lawyers improperly value a case – high or low – because they’re not familiar with the relief available under the laws they’ve pled, and don’t know how to mix and match forms of relief to maximize value.  Some laws limit recoveries to actual wage loss alone.  Some don’t.  But many lawyers see the value of an employment case as determined by wage loss. That thinking is wrong, and leaves a lot on the table.  Here’s an illustration.  Equitable relief, to pick one, is available in many cases, and can be powerful leverage to increase the recovery. You don’t bake a cake with a single ingredient. Nor do you get maximum value from an employment case by looking at it only from one angle. Example?  We sued a state agency for race discrimination. The jury awarded $284,000.00.  Post-trial, we then asked the court to put our client back to work.  Once we got the reinstatement order, we negotiated it away for another $186,000.00.  The client’s recovery grew to $470,000.00, in a case with just $80,000 in lost wages.  Who knew?  We did. With fees on top of that, the total recovery was $692,000.00, eight and a half times his actual losses.  Read more here.
• Another example?  In a lawsuit where our client was still employed and had lost nothing, we recovered $168,000 at trial for emotional distress.  Zero wage loss, but a six-figure verdict.  That client was turned down by a dozen lawyers who saw no value because she hadn’t lost a cent.  You know what we thought?  So what?  We can win that.  And because a losing employer pays fees, our client kept the entire verdict.  Our fees were another $192,000.00 on top of that.  We recovered a total of $360,000 in a case twelve lawyers saw as worthless.
• In an independent contractor misclassification case, the lawyer sued under a federal statute, 26 U.S.C. 7434, which relates to the filing of false tax returns. But that statute only applies to “information returns,” and it had no application to his client’s case. He was hit with attorneys’ fees for filing a frivolous lawsuit.

I could give literally dozens of examples. But these make the point. It’s dangerous for lawyers to take cases they don’t handle daily. We have deep experience in all the state and federal laws that apply to the workplace.  It took years to master them, and to know what to use and when (and what to avoid). Those laws are constantly changing, and so are the judicial interpretations.  Unless we specialized in employment law, and limited our practice to this one field, we could not competently represent my clients.

Referrals to Me for Representation

Have someone who needs an employee rights lawyer?  I would appreciate the referral.  Our consultations are always free, and we only work on a contingency basis: no fee if no recovery.  You can reach me at Jim@JimGarritylaw.com, on Facebook at Facebook.com/JimGarrityOnline, Or on my cell phone at 850-345-1098.

We represent employees at all stages:

• Current employees who just need guidance on discipline, leave, medical issues, or other job-related questions
• Employees who are ready to pursue a claim and want to know how to make an internal complaint or a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) or other pertinent body
• In the filing of lawsuits in state or federal court, through trial
• Appeals before state and federal appellate bodies
• Negotiating severance packages, converting terminations to resignations, and negotiating references to be given

Free Guidance if You’re Handling an Employment Case

If you’ve accepted representation in an employment case and need guidance, we’re happy to help at no cost.  Questions we commonly field from lawyers who need help include:

• Whether to accept representation in an administrative or judicial proceeding
• The claims to file or avoid, including whether a specific case should be filed in state or federal court
• Statutes of limitation issues, Including how to frame claims to benefit from longer or alternative limitations period
• The types of relief available, the types that are not available, and limitations in each category
• What types of discovery to conduct or avoid to maximize case strengths and minimize weaknesses
• Whether a case is one right for a jury trial or whether it should be settled
• Case valuations

Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.

Jim