Michael W. Fox

Mr. Fox has represented employers for more than thirty-five years. He has been Board Certified in Labor and Employment Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization since 1980 and is a Fellow in the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers. He has a Yellow Belt certification from Legal Lean Sigma. He has been regularly listed in the Best Lawyers in America in Labor and Employment Law, as a Texas Monthly “Super Lawyer” in employment litigation and as one of America’s Leading Lawyers for Business by Chambers USA, where he was characterized by clients as a “great trial lawyer” with a “knack of identifying the points in the case to focus on.”

Mr. Fox defends employers in employment law litigation including successfully defending the first male on male sexual harassment case tried to a jury in Texas. He has had jury trials in the four largest cities in Texas as well as other parts of the state including Amarillo, Texarkana and El Paso.

In addition to jury trials, he has represented employers in more than 25 arbitration hearings on non-labor matters including race, sex and national origin discrimination, wage and hour claims, breach of contract and enforcement of covenants not to compete.

Mr. Fox also has extensive experience representing employers in collective actions under the FLSA. In 2008, he was successful in decertifying a class of more than 1,000 opt-ins and then obtaining a favorable jury verdict in the claims of the named plaintiffs.

In November, 2009 Mr. Fox was called as an expert witness to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee based on his extensive experience with jury trials and arbitration. His written testimony provided a strong defense of arbitration of employment claims as well as support for the Supreme Court’s “common sense” limitation of the mixed motive instruction in jury trials under the ADEA.

In July, 2002, Mr. Fox started the first employment law related web log, Jottings By An Employer’s Lawyer, now affiliated with law.com Mr. Fox is also the Editor of HR Specialist, Texas Employment Law, a National Institute of Business Management publication and regularly contributes content to BusinessManagementDaily.com.

What Is a Sincere Religious Belief? The Fifth Circuit Weighs In On a Religious Discrimination Claim

In a 2-to-1 decision written by Judge Edward Prado, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently chimed in on an employee’s claim that her employer failed to accommodate a religious observance, for which “she believed strongly that she ‘needed’ to be at church . . . as a religious matter.”…..

How To Calculate Unpaid Overtime: Fifth Circuit Rules In Favor of FWW

In an appeal concerning the correct calculation of overtime damages due to employees misclassified as exempt, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals emphatically slammed the door on a trial court’s attempt to require an employer to pay time-and-one-half for all overtime hours worked. Instead, the Fifth Circuit held that the…..

Supreme Court Arbitration Jurisprudence—No Class Action If You Say So

Combining last week’s decision in American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant with its decision earlier this month in Oxford Health Plans v. Sutter, the Supreme Court’s position now seems clear. If an employer wants to avoid class or collective actions, it can do so by having an arbitration agreement…..