Jeremy Heisler is a Founding Partner of Sanford Wittels & Heisler, LLP, a national law firm with offices in Washington, D.C., New York, and California. He received his law degree from Brooklyn Law School in 1979.
Throughout his twenty-five year legal career, Mr. Heisler has had notable success in class actions and complex multi-party and multi-state litigation, producing nearly $100 million in benefits to class members. In addition, Mr. Heisler has established leading employment-law precedents, including the expansion of the rights of wrongfully discharged employees. Mr. Heisler has also prevailed in novel and groundbreaking litigation against the largest defense law firms in the nation.
Mr. Heisler’s most recent victory came when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that sales representatives employed by pharmaceutical giant Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation were entitled to overtime pay under Federal, New York and California law. This ruling not only paves the way for the nationwide collective action, In Re Novartis Wage and Hour Litigation to move forward; it also has wide implications for the pharmaceutical industry as a whole.
Before founding SWH in January 2004, Mr. Heisler formed his own law firm in 1991, and litigated a number of landmark cases on behalf of plaintiffs, including Graham v. City of New York, 2 A.D.3d 678 (2d Dept. 2003), a police brutality case which produced a judgment of nearly $500,000 after two trials and five appeals. He has also worked with fellow founding partner, Steven L. Wittels from 1997 to 2003, and successfully prosecuted many significant class actions, including (1) Nasoff v. G.E. Capital, et al., a settlement which obtained benefits totaling $19.2 million for over 400,000 consumers who leased vehicles from G.E. Capital and were overcharged on late fees; and (2) Greenberger v. Copelco Leasing Corp., a $15 million settlement for class of defrauded equipment lease consumers.
Mr. Heisler served as an appellate law assistant for the Appellate Term in Manhattan, where he drafted bench memoranda and judicial opinions for the justices on appeals ranging from constitutional law actions and criminal prosecutions to multi-million dollar real estate litigation.