Our Team

Nicholas Woodfield
Washington, District of Columbia
Principal

Nicholas Woodfield, Principal

Nicholas Woodfield is a seasoned trial attorney specializing in civil litigation and appellate advocacy who has recovered millions of dollars in unpaid overtime and wages for his clients. Mr. Woodfield has tried more than 30 jury trials and 20 non-jury trials. He is President of the Virginia Employment Lawyer’s Association, and he serves as the National Employment Lawyers Association’s Virginia State Advisory Representative to its Judicial Nominations Committee.

Mr. Woodfield focuses his practice on Fair Labor Standards Act wage non-payment and misclassification claims, state law wage non-payment claims, Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower complaints, False Claims Act (qui tam) claims, and discrimination and retaliation cases, including a $1,134, 886.86 Wage Payment Act judgment, a $650.000 retaliation jury verdict, a $101,000 Title VII/Equal Pay Act jury verdict and numerous settlements exceeding $1,000,000.  His cases have helped broaden federal and state protections for employees and whistleblowers, including federal employee whistleblowers - Drake v. USAID, Miller v. TSA; SOX whistleblowers - Kalkunte v. DVI; those who have suffered workplace discrimination - Kennedy v. Virginia Tech; those who have been wrongfully discharged - Miller v. Washington Workplace, Randolph v. ADT; those who have had their wages or benefits unlawfully withheld -  Sharer v. Tandberg; and those who fight against forced arbitration of their employment claims  Shaffer v. ACS. Mr. Woodfield was also Sheila Kalkunte's counsel in her ground-breaking Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) whistleblower retaliation claim, which remains one of the few and earliest SOX whistleblowers to have prevailed at the trail level.

Mr. Woodfield’s successes have been recognized by various publications, including BNA’s Daily Labor Report, The National Law Journal, and Employment Law360.  Recently, Mr. Woodfield was quoted in Law360 regarding his precedent setting victory in Randolph v. ADT, where the District Court of Maryland granted summary judgment for the employees, expanding protections for employees who report their employer for not paying them properly.  He was also quoted in The National Law Journal about the seminal Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower case of Kalkunte v. DVI Financial Services, Inc., where the Department of Labor's Administrative Review Board affirmed, for what appears to be the first time, a decision to award damages to a SOX plaintiff.  Mr. Woodfield also earned accolades for redefining the scope of protections available to federal whistleblowers in the Federal Circuit’s decision in Drake v. Agency for International Development, 543 F.3d 1377 (Fed. Cir. 2008).

Mr. Woodfield regularly tries cases for The Employment Law Group^® law firm in Montgomery County, Prince George's County, the District of Columbia, and the Eastern District of Virginia, and in addition to bench trials and administrative hearings in EEO and MSPB matters he regularly tries three to four week long trials per year in state and federal court. He started his career in Birmingham, Alabama practicing in Alabama's and Florida's state and federal courts, and in 1999 he matriculated at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, where he undertook an academic course of study as a Visiting Postgraduate Student in Law. His research focused upon the common law defense of sovereign immunity and led him to Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2000, where he practiced law with the law firm of Watson & Renner. While at Watson & Renner, Mr. Woodfield expanded his practice by representing electric utilities, manufacturers, tele-communications and other industries in cancer claims, toxic torts and environmental exposure claims. He also handled and tried medical malpractice cases for the firm. In 2002 he joined the Washington, D.C. law firm of Hughes & Bentzen, PLLC as a partner, and by 2003 he limited his practice to employment matters. At the same time he committed himself to representing only employees who had been treated unfairly by their employers, and so he joined forces with The Employment Law Group^® law firm in 2003.

Mr. Woodfield is admitted to practice law in the state and federal courts of Alabama, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, and in 2005 he was admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court.  Most recently, Mr. Woodfield was admitted to the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.

Areas of Practice:

• FLSA Wage and Overtime Claims
• Whistleblower Retaliation Claims
• Merit Systems Protection Board Cases
• Appellate Litigation

Bar Admissions:

Alabama, 1995
District of Columbia, 2000
Virginia, 2002
Maryland, 2003
U.S. District Court Northern District of Florida
U.S. District Court Eastern District of Virginia
U.S. District Court Western District of Virginia
U.S. District Court District of Maryland
U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia
U.S. Court of Appeals 3rd Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals 4th Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit
U.S. Supreme Court

Education:

Oxford University, Oxford, England, 2000
Post Graduate Research in Law and Jurisprudence

Cumberland School of Law Samford University, 1995
Juris Doctorate

Washington and Lee University, 1990
Bachelor of Arts

Representative Cases:

Randolph v. ADT Security Services, Inc., ___ F.Supp.2d ____, 15 Wage & Hour Cas.2d (BNA) 1811 (D. Md. 2010).

Kennedy v. Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, 2009 WL 1321691, 92 Empl. Prac. Dec. P 43, 616 (W.D. Va. 2009).

Drake v. Agency for International Development, 543 F.3d 1377 (Fed. Cir. 2008).

Kalkunte v. DVI Financial Services, Inc., 2004-SOX-56, 2005 WL 2822926 (Dept. of Labor, A.L.J. July 18, 2005)

Publications:

"The SEC’s new rules for the Dodd-Frank whistle-blower program," Westlaw Journal on Employment, Volume 26, Issue 3 (September 6, 2011).

Author: "Maryland Workplace Fraud Act and the Misclassification of Construction and Landscaping Employees," Maryland State Bar Association Fall Newsletter (December 2010).

Author: "DMD Extends FLSA’s Prohibition of Retaliation to Mistaken but Good Faith Complaints to a State Agency," Maryland State Bar Association Fall Newsletter (December 2010).

Author: Update to "Wage-Hour Practice," a chapter in the D.C. Practice Manual (D.C. Bar Publications), 2009

Author: "Wage and Hour Laws," Avvo, September 2008

Author: "The Policy/Operational Dichotomy in Intra-State Tort Liability: An Example of the Ever-Continuing Transformation of the Common Law", 29 Denv. J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 27, 2000

Co-Author: "A Practitioner's Guide to Alabama's Tort of Bad Faith", 57 Ala. Law. 277, 1996

Speaking Engagements:

Speaker: “Problems with FLSA: Classifications, blackberries and Overtime Considerations,” Washington college of Law Labor & Employment Law Forum, 2011.

Speaker: “Maximizing the Value of Your Case,” Securing Wages, Protecting hours: Representing Workers Under the FLSA, 2011.

Guest Speaker: “Employment Law from a Plaintiff’s Lawyer’s Perspective,” Judicial Externship, 2011.

Panelist: “Fair Labor Standards Act and Unpaid Wage Actions,” DC Bar CLE, October 26, 2010.

Panelist: "FLSA and Qui Tam Law," Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Association, April 11, 2008.