Minnesota Lawyer

The year 2020 was one many people won’t soon forget, but Joel Rietz probably has more reason than most to remember the year of the pandemic.

COVID-19 drew on Daniel Santos’ skills over a nearly two-decade career as an attorney and a follower of the servant leadership philosophy.

The United States’ relationship with China is usually fraught to some level, but one thing remains constant: They want U.S. corn.

When Brian Vander Pol moved from a private practice to an in-house role, he did so with the confidence that his relationship with his one and only client would be a solid one.

For this edition of POWER 30, we’ve chosen to focus on employment lawyers.

In 1984, about 6,000 nurses in Minnesota went on strike for 38 days. It was the largest nurses strike in American history until 2010, when they again went on strike. That was the next strike to be the largest in U.S. history. In 2016 nurses struck again and were out for 37 days, one day short of the 1984 strike.

As pandemic shutdowns occurred, companies began to lay off employees. One company laid off five men at the same time. They just happened to be the oldest employees and those with real or suspected health conditions.

Steven Andrew Smith would like to bring another tip-pooling case, but now is hardly a good time, with restaurants closed or even out of business.

David E. Schlesinger is the proud son of Robert Schlesinger, who was described in a magazine article in the 1970s as “typical of the new breed of liberal, courageous lawyers … long of hair, long on guts.” The civil rights lawyer instilled a similar ethic in his son, a member of Sen. Paul Wellstone’s campaign when the senator’s plane crashed. Persuaded by Wellstone’s commitment to the “little guy,” he decided to focus on individual plaintiffs, in another branch of civil rights, employment law.

Lawrence Schaefer launched his employment discrimination career by working on the iconic Minnesota case Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., decided in 1997, the first class-action sexual harassment lawsuit in the United States. The class was certified by Judge James Rosenbaum. After a special master awarded the members, whom he called “histrionic,” about $10,000 each, the 8th Circuit reversed and the case subsequently settled for $3.5 million. The appellate court characterized the harassment as “egregious, to say the least.” The opinion clarified that the defendant takes the victim as he finds her when it comes to assessing damages.