Michael R. Minkoff is a partner at Stevenson Marino LLP. Mr. Minkoff has spent his career working exclusively on employment law matters, representing employees and employers in pre-litigation, litigation, and administrative matters. His primary focus is split between wage and hour class and collective actions, and resolving claims involving discrimination, retaliation, and whistleblower reprisal, including claims pertaining to:

• Single plaintiff, class actions, and collective actions alleging unpaid wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act, New York Labor Law, and New Jersey Wage and Hour Law;
• Failure to pay bonuses and commissions;
• Unlawful deductions from wages;
• Pay equity claims under federal and state law;
• Race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity discrimination and retaliation claims;
• Wrongful discharge matters;
• Severance negotiations;
• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act;
• Benefits claims under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act;
• Interference claims under the Family Medical Leave Act;
• Pregnancy discrimination claims under federal and state law;
• The Americans with Disabilities Act;
• Whistleblower matters under the NYLL § 740 and the False Claims Act; and
• Misappropriation of trade secrets and faithless servant matters

Formerly the chair of the wage and hour division at a boutique employment law firm, Mr. Minkoff has handled dozens of unpaid wage cases across several industries involving discrete legal issues that have alleged, among other things:

• Misclassification of workers in various settings from the corporate world to manual workers;
• Tip misappropriation, wage theft, and refusal to pay proper hourly wages in the hospitality industry;
• Failure to pay intra-day travel time for commercial cleaners;
• Unlawful deductions from live-in building superintendents;
• Commission agreement violations for inside-sales workers;
• Off-the-clock violations in several industries ranging from skilled tradesmen, landscapers, and restaurant workers;
• Prevailing wage and supplemental benefits violations for public work contracts;
• Unpaid overtime and straight-time wages for in-home staff of A-List celebrities;
• Pay equity violations triggered by paying women and people of color lower wages than counterparts who fell outside their protected classes; and
• Spread-of-hours violations when working over ten hours from start to finish within the day’s work.

While in law school, Mr. Minkoff was a member of the Internal Law Journal, served as a law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, and clerked in the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. He also taught legal research and writing as a student Dean’s Fellow, and was the drummer in the band Motion 2 Quash as part of George Washington’s “Law Revue.” Since graduating, Mr. Minkoff has served as a mentor to both law students and undergraduate students alike. Mr. Minkoff graduated cum laude from The George Washington University Law School, and earned his Bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Boston College.