Press Release

Holland & Knight Hires Trio For New ERISA Litigation Team

Issued by Holland & Knight

Apr. 30, 2020

April 20, 2020, 8:33 PM EDT) -- Holland & Knight LLP said Monday it had created an Employee Retirement Income Security Act litigation team, luring two new partners from Greenberg Traurig LLP and another from Chamberlain Hrdlicka White Williams & Aughtry PC.

Todd Wozniak, who started at Holland & Knight on Monday after 13 years at Greenberg Traurig, will lead the new team. He brings with him a co-worker from Greenberg Traurig, Lindsey Camp, and a former colleague, Peter Hall, who most recently worked at Chamberlain Hrdlicka. Camp and Hall started over the past two weeks.

"We didn't time it to be during the pandemic," Wozniak said with a laugh. "With any kind of move like this, it doesn't happen overnight."

Wozniak said the opportunity to lead a litigation team at Holland & Knight appealed to him in part because of the firm's work with employee stock ownership plans, which he and his colleagues have worked with a great deal over their careers.

In fact, Wozniak considers an ESOP lawsuit he and Camp worked on from 2014 to 2017 to have produced a highlight of his career: a damages-free settlement against his client, Brijon Management & Employee Leasing Services Inc., which was featured heavily in Wozniak's 2018 Law360 MVP profile.

"We ended up resolving and settling on a classwide basis ... and nothing was paid to the class or the plaintiffs' lawyer," Wozniak said. "That was unique — I've never seen that happen before."

Wozniak and Camp worked together on another ERISA matter that both consider a career highlight: a series of ERISA and securities suits lodged against the GlaxoSmithKline PLC unit Stiefel Laboratories Inc. over an employee stock bonus plan.

The accusations — that the company defrauded investors and employees by rebuying undervalued stock before a $2.9 billion sale to GlaxoSmithKline — could have led to hefty damages, Wozniak said, but his litigation team defeated all but one lawsuit arising from the alleged misconduct.

"That was very significant for that client, because the dollar amounts at stake were very large, and they felt they were in the right," Wozniak said.

Camp said she thinks she and her colleagues' amount of trial experience will distinguish Holland & Knight's new ERISA litigation group from others. Camp, a Wake Forest Law School graduate, has worked with Wozniak for almost 14 years, and Wozniak and Hall worked together for close to 10, the attorneys said.

The attorneys met at King & Spalding LLP, where they all worked in the 2000s. They also all worked together at Greenberg Traurig, which Wozniak and Camp joined in 2007 and Hall joined in 2009. Hall left Greenberg Traurig for Chamberlain Hrdlicka in 2016.

Hall, a Vanderbilt University Law School graduate, said he was excited about the opportunity to "get the band back together" by joining Holland & Knight with his two longtime colleagues.

Wozniak, who holds a law degree from the University of Michigan, echoed that sentiment and added that the trio is glad to be part of a new ERISA litigation group at a firm with "a great benefits and executive compensation practice and a top-notch ESOP group, which fits very well with what we do."

Wozniak estimates the new group will contain at least 10 attorneys, including four existing Holland & Knight partners and two associates he plans to hire in Atlanta.

He said the time was right for the firm to formalize an ERISA litigation team because "the litigation is becoming much more complex, much more specialized."

"The idea was: Let's dedicate the people who want to do this work to this. Let's train the associates and the future partners at the firm," Wozniak said.

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