JEFFREY S. BERLIN is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office. He handles contested matters in federal and state courts; before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the National Mediation Board, the United States Department of Labor, the Surface Transportation Board and other federal and state regulatory agencies; and in arbitration. He has served as lead trial counsel in federal district courts in seventeen states and the District of Columbia; has argued dozens of cases in federal and state appellate courts, including the United States Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Eleventh, and District of Columbia Circuits; and has written briefs that were filed in numerous other appellate cases. Mr. Berlin successfully argued in the United States Supreme Court in Norfolk & Western Railway Company v. American Train Dispatchers’ Association, 499 U.S. 117 (1991).
Mr. Berlin counsels clients in connection with a wide variety of employment and labor matters, including equal employment opportunity, sexual harassment, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and federal, state and local regulation of working conditions; negotiation of employment and separation agreements; protection of confidential information, including trade secrets; labor union representation campaigns and negotiation of labor agreements; disputes over actual or threatened strikes and picketing; allegations of unfair labor practices; and labor issues arising in connection with corporate acquisitions, sales, mergers, and other business transactions. He has represented employers in class actions and multi-plaintiff cases, is experienced in the use of statistical proof in litigation, and has handled matters arising under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Uniform Trade Secrets Act.
For more than 30 years, Mr. Berlin has regularly represented railroads and other employers subject to the Railway Labor Act. He has participated in litigation at all levels of the federal court system resolving significant issues arising under the Railway Labor Act and under provisions of the Interstate Commerce Act and Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act relating to the protection of employees who are affected by railroad mergers, sales, acquisitions, leases, abandonments, and facility closures. He has handled numerous railroad arbitration cases and administrative and judicial appeals from arbitration awards. Mr. Berlin has also assisted railroad industry clients of all sizes in the design and implementation of transactions that are subject to federal regulation, and in administrative agency and judicial proceedings pertaining to those transactions.
Mr. Berlin received his B.A. degree from Oberlin College, cum laude, with high honors in government, and his J.D. degree, cum laude, from Harvard Law School. He served as a captain in the United States Air Force, Judge Advocate General’s Department, and was a lawyer in the federal government’s mandatory wage-price controls program from 1971 to 1974, finishing his public service as chief counsel of the program. He has been engaged in the private practice of law since 1974.