Christopher G. Ward

Christopher Ward is a trial lawyer and labor and employment attorney representing employers throughout the country. Christopher focuses on wage and hour and privacy-related class action litigation, high-stakes jury and bench trials, labor relations counseling, litigation, arbitration, and collective bargaining. He has extensive experience representing employers in the aviation, transportation, manufacturing, hospitality, and health care industries. He is a partner in the firms Labor & Employment Practice. Christopher has a wealth of first-chair trial and appellate counsel experience and has tried multiple employment cases to full defense verdicts in the California state and federal courts. As a class action lawyer, he has extensive experience defending bet the company matters and has designed and implemented complex and aggressive strategies that resulted in successful outcomes at class certification and on-the-merits judgments for the employer against novel theories of law. Christopher is also a leading attorney in the design, implementation, and usage of arbitration agreements with class action waivers, and has successfully enforced dozens of such agreements against efforts to resist them in California class action litigation. He regularly handles wage and hour matters under both the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the provisions of the California Labor Code and Business & Professions Code. Christopher also routinely counsels clients on wage and hour compliance matters, including compliance with municipal wage orders, particularly those governing wage and hour matters at airports throughout the country. A leading strategist and thought leader, he regularly contributes to conversations around the rapidly evolving and complex landscape of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), and frequently works on defending and resolving BIPA class action matters. Christopher has substantial experience in traditional labor matters, with a significant emphasis on labor relations in the commercial aviation industry under the Railway Labor Act. He has litigated multiple test case matters addressing the evolution of the Railway Labor Act versus National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) jurisdiction over airline service providers and secured critical precedent-setting decisions for such clients. Christophers work in the labor relations arena also includes representing employers in administrative matters and litigation before the National Mediation Board, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and the United States Courts of Appeals. Christopher also has experience advising clients on public accommodations laws and litigating public accommodations matters, including successfully securing summary judgment for a major stadium operator and stadium owner defeating a novel theory of law seeking to create liability arising from unpopular verbal fan expression during a large-scale sporting event that occurred between two national teams during a major international soccer tournament held in the US.