Attorney for Managers and Supervisors in New York City

Middle management is the most legally exposed position in a company, and the least protected. You carry out decisions you did not make, and you are the name attached to them. You are told you are exempt from overtime while working sixty hours and spending most of them doing the same work as the people you supervise. Your bonus is called discretionary in the plan document and guaranteed in conversation. And when something goes wrong beneath you, the investigation starts with you.

The Law Offices of Albert Goodwin represents managers, supervisors, directors, and vice presidents in New York City in their disputes with their employers, and defends them when they are named individually.

The Problems Managers Actually Have

You Are Called Exempt but You May Not Be

A title and a salary do not create an exemption from overtime. New York applies its own salary threshold, higher than the federal one, and both require that your primary duty actually be management. Working supervisors who spend most of their time doing the same work as their reports are the single largest category of misclassified employees in New York. See exempt misclassification for managers.

Your Bonus or Commission Was Not Paid

Whether the money you are owed counts as wages under the New York Labor Law determines whether you get liquidated damages and your attorney fees, or a plain contract claim. The answer depends on the plan language, not on what it is called. See unpaid bonus and commission claims.

You Have Been Sued Personally

Under New York State and New York City human rights law, individual supervisors can be named as defendants alongside the company, and under wage and hour law, managers with operational control can be liable as employers. The company's lawyer represents the company. See individual liability of supervisors.

You Are the Subject of an HR Investigation

A complaint has been made about you. HR is investigating. What you say in that interview will be the record, and the process is not designed to protect you. See being investigated at work.

You Have Been Put on a Performance Improvement Plan

A PIP is sometimes a genuine attempt to fix performance and sometimes documentation being assembled before a termination. Telling the difference, and responding correctly, changes what happens next. See responding to a PIP.

You Are Being Told to Do Something You Should Not Do

Managers are the people asked to shave hours, misclassify a worker, deny a leave request, or execute a layoff list that looks like a pattern. Carrying it out creates personal exposure. Refusing creates a different risk. See when you are asked to do something unlawful.

The Structural Problem: You Are on Both Sides

Everything on this page follows from one fact. A manager is an employee with statutory protections, and simultaneously an agent of the employer whose acts can create liability for the company and for the manager personally. Human resources exists to protect the company, not you, and while HR professionals are frequently decent people acting in good faith, the institutional interest is not yours. When those interests diverge, which is usually the moment something has gone wrong, the manager is the person with no one representing them.

This is why we tell managers that the useful time to get advice is earlier than feels necessary: before the investigation interview, before signing the PIP acknowledgment, before responding to the demand that you sign a corrective statement, and before accepting a severance offer that arrives with a seven day deadline attached.

Discrimination, Harassment, and Retaliation

Managers bring these claims as often as anyone, and they face a particular obstacle: the employer's answer is almost always that the decision was about performance, and a manager's performance is inherently more subjective and more documented than a line employee's. Building these cases involves comparator evidence, the timing of the adverse action relative to the protected activity, shifting explanations, and the paper trail the employer created and now relies on.

New York City's Human Rights Law is considerably more protective than federal law. It applies to smaller employers, it uses a lower standard for what counts as unlawful treatment, and it does not require conduct to be severe or pervasive. New York State law was amended to remove the severe or pervasive requirement as well, and the time to file a discrimination complaint with the State Division of Human Rights was extended to three years for claims arising after the amendment took effect. Federal claims retain their own shorter deadline, generally requiring a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission within 300 days in New York. See employment discrimination, sexual harassment, workplace harassment, and whether you can sue your employer for discrimination.

Contracts, Covenants, and Leaving

Managers usually have fewer contractual protections than executives and the same restrictive covenants. Before you take a job with a competitor, know what your non-compete, customer non-solicit, and employee no-hire provisions actually say and whether they are enforceable in New York, which depends on a reasonableness analysis rather than on the document's confidence. See non-compete defense, non-solicitation agreements, and employment contract review.

If you have been terminated or offered a separation package, the agreement in front of you is negotiable more often than employees assume, and the deadline printed on it is frequently longer than the one you were told about verbally. See severance agreement review and wrongful termination.

If You Are Senior Enough to Be an Officer

Directors and vice presidents sometimes hold officer titles without understanding what changes. Officers face personal exposure for trust fund taxes and certain wage obligations, and they have indemnification rights that ordinary employees do not. If you have been elected an officer by a board, see our C-suite section, particularly indemnification and D&O coverage and officer personal liability.

You can contact us by phone at 212-233-1233 or by email at [email protected].