Henry M. Willis
Phone:
323.655.4700
Email:
hmw [at] ssdslaw [dot] com
Areas of Practice
Henry Willis has litigated a wide variety of cases in arbitration, administrative forums, and court, including federal and state court trials involving claims of employment discrimination, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duties, RICO violations, fraud and conversion, and retaliation against whistleblowers and union organizers. Mr. Willis has pursued collection actions for a wide variety of benefit funds over his career, has arbitrated trustee deadlocks, and has experience representing benefit funds and other creditors in Bankruptcy Court. He has advised our clients on their responsibilities as employers and defended suits brought against them by former employees.
He is equally accomplished in appellate work. He is also a member of the Nevada Bar.
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Professional History
Mr. Willis defended Los Angeles' Grocery Workers Retention Ordinance against challenges by employers in California Grocers Assn. v. City of Los Angeles (2011) 52 Cal.4th 177, obtaining a California Supreme Court decision that upholds not only that Ordinance, but other local measures protecting workers from immediate job loss when the businesses they work for change ownership. He has also won appellate victories defending California's "Little Norris-LaGuardia Act," requiring the NLRB to reevaluate its decisions concerning unions' rights against successor employers, enforcing teachers' recall rights, and turning back employer challenges to unions' no-subcontracting clauses, to cover only some of his cases with Schwartz, Steinsapir. He has been named a Super Lawyer for more than a dozen years and has been awarded the Kenny Award for his advocacy for workers’ rights.
Mr. Willis has written on privacy rights, violence in the workplace, defamation, legal ethics, immigration law, the Americans with Disabilities Act and other federal laws affecting unions. He has also helped organize seminars for unions, lawyers and workers' advocates on effective picketing tactics, organizing workers in the gig economy and protecting immigrant workers.
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Bachelor of Arts, Wesleyan University
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University of California, Berkeley School of Law, Order of the Coif
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AFL-CIO, Union Lawyers Association
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National Lawyers Guild, Labor & Employment Committee Steering Committee
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National Lawyers Guild, Los Angeles Chapter, Workers Rights Committee
