Michael J. Dauphinais

Michael is an associate in the firm’s Labor and Employment department. He focuses his practice on employment litigation, counseling and strategic workforce planning.

Michael represents businesses in complex employment litigation, including wage and hour lawsuits, non-compete and trade secret litigation (especially in the sale-of-business context) and executive termination disputes. He frequently helps employers resolve charges before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and state civil rights departments and defend against employment discrimination lawsuits. Michael also assists businesses in employment-related administrative proceedings, including defending state wage claims, responding to state and federal wage and hour audits and complex unemployment and garnishment matters.

Outside of dispute resolution, Michael assists large and mid-sized employers as strategic outside counsel, counseling employers on sensitive employment issues, conducting critical internal investigations and assisting with high-risk terminations. Michael provides employers with efficient, results-driven day-to-day employment advice and drafts practical work rules, policies, procedures and employee handbooks to support employers’ specific business goals.

Michael also assists Honigman’s M&A deal teams with labor and employment matters, including negotiating restrictive covenants for sellers of businesses.

Practice Areas

Representative Matters

• Secured dismissal at the motion to dismiss stage of mid-eight-figure equity claim by former executive and leveraged counter-claims to secure payment of a monetary settlement to the client

• Obtained temporary restraining order against former employee based on misappropriation of trade secrets claims

• Conducted urgent internal investigation into executive misconduct spanning dozens of witness interviews in a compressed time frame to provide detailed results for client consideration

• Assisted with aggressive response to California wage and hour lawsuit that led to a dismissal with prejudice and a monetary settlement paid by the plaintiff

• Assisted with arbitration of breach of sale-of-business restrictive covenants to secure liability finding and mid-six-figure damages award.
  Compelled individual arbitration of statewide wage and hour collective action involving over one hundred class members

• Obtained dismissal of state administrative wage claim

• Obtained dismissal of state and federal charges of employment discrimination

Education

Admissions

Court Admissions

Awards

• The Best Lawyers in America, Recognized as "One to Watch," 2024
  • Recognized in the area of Litigation - Labor and Employment

Press Releases

Alerts

Publications

Blog Posts