Overview

The retail industry is uniquely informed by its interaction with customers. Much of the legal and regulatory framework governing the industry is aimed at protecting those customers, as well as the employees who engage them.

As retailers embraced e-commerce (while often maintaining their "brick and mortar" facilities) and e-commerce retailers expanded to physical stores, customer expectations increased, and the attendant legal needs grew more complex.

At Epstein Becker Green, we represent retailers of all types and sizes—big-box stores, grocery chains, pharmacy chains, restaurants, luxury stores, and much more—both on- and offline. We advise them on their myriad issues of labor, employment, and workforce management. We also bring a special focus to health care retail, a rapidly expanding field with its own particular compliance challenges.

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Experience

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  • Defeated a class action lawsuit alleging that a global retailers’ failure to provide Braille gift cards violated federal, state, and local accessibility laws. Our attorneys got the cases completely dismissed, and established not only that the claims had no basis in the law/regulations but that the clients also sufficiently provided access in other ways.
  • Defended a large independent shoe retailer against attempts to certify a nationwide Fair Labor Standards Act collective action involving the exempt status of store managers. We challenged the plaintiff’s contention of common practices by proving the plaintiff had limited knowledge of payment practices at other store locations.
  • Mitigated potential total exposure in a novel wage and hour class action that affected thousands of a national retailer’s workforce located in New York State. Upon investigating and confirming that the client had inadvertently violated the statute at issue and faced approximately $25 million in exposure, we strategically focused on mitigation by pursing mediation. Through creative arguments, we successfully resolved the matter for less than $2 million.
  • Represented a luxury retailer in successfully managing its nationwide restructuring as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We helped the client implement layoffs and furloughs by providing strategic advice to successfully avoid litigation and comply with an ever-changing legal landscape. We also provided advice on how to restructure the organization effectively to be able to compete in the current and post-pandemic environment.
  • Negotiated the terms of, and drafted contracts to implement, numerous 340B contract pharmacy arrangements among retail pharmacy chains, hospitals, and 340B technology services vendors.

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