David Gottlieb

Practice Areas

Practice areas include Employment Litigation and Sexual Harassment & Assault.

David E. Gottlieb is a Partner at Wigdor. David is a zealous advocate for employees who have been subjected to discrimination, harassment, retaliation and other forms of unlawful workplace misconduct. He also represents all victims of sexual misconduct and abuse whether that conduct arises in the workplace, educational or medical settings, or otherwise.

A substantial volume of David’s work involves various forms of gender discrimination, including sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination, equal pay violations and matters in which women are excluded from and have careers stalled due to “boys clubs” in the workplace. David has represented thousands of plaintiffs in individual, multi-plaintiff, collective and class action litigation before a wide array of federal and state trial and appellate courts, administrative agencies and arbitral forums. David has represented clients from almost every industry including financial services, hospitality, tech, retail, advertising, manufacturing, medicine and hospitals, transportation, fashion, education, government, communications, architecture, sports and media.

David represented clients in numerous highly publicized employment discrimination matters. He represented five on-air female journalists alleging age and gender discrimination at NY1 in the matter of Torre et al. v. Charter Communications, Inc. et al., No. 19 Civ. 05708, which is widely credited with shining a spotlight on the egregious discrimination women face in the world of TV media. David is one of the lead attorneys in Flores et al. v. National Football League, et al., No. 22 Civ. 00871, the class action filed against the NFL alleging systemic discrimination in the hiring, retention and treatment of head coaches and other executives. David represented a senior in-house lawyer at Goldman Sachs who was terminated for raising complaints about sexual misconduct and a cover-up that went all the way to the bank’s then-General Counsel in the matter of Crawford v. Goldman Sachs, Inc., No. 159731/2020. David also represented numerous loss prevention officers in a series of single, multi-plaintiff and class action cases alleging race discrimination at CVS, a matter which receiving national media attention and shed light on the practice of racial profiling in retail settings in Lamarr-Arruz v. CVS Pharmacy, Inc., No. 15 Civ. 04261 (S.D.N.Y.).

Publicity

David and his cases have been featured on CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNBC, Cheddar TV, National Public Radio, 1010 WINS, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, Yahoo News, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune Magazine, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Reuters, Business Insider, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, HuffPost, New York Law Journal, New York Daily News, New York Post, New York Business Journal, Newsweek, Gothamist, Institutional Investor, Business Insurance, MarketWatch, Law360, Adweek, Above the Law, Vox, People Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, TMZ and many others.

Awards

David has been widely recognized by his peers and industry publications as a leader in his field. In 2021, Law360 named him a Titan of the Plaintiff’s Bar, awarded to only 11 lawyers nationally. David was also recognized by Chambers USA Labor & Employment: Mainly Plaintiffs from 2021-2023. He is a leading labor and employment litigation attorney by Best Lawyers and has been selected to the New York Metro Super Lawyers and Rising Stars Super Lawyers list since 2014. Since 2019, David has been named to the Lawdragon Leading Employment Lawyers List.

Community Involvement

David has acted as the pro bono general legal counsel for a New York City-based LGBTQ advocacy organization.

David previously worked for The Innocence Project, an organization devoted to exonerating wrongfully convicted inmates. Among his accomplishments, he helped a death row inmate receive an eleventh-hour stay of execution and ultimately, clemency, because of exculpatory DNA evidence in Williams v. Carter, No. 03-cv-1067 (S.D. Ind. 2003).

Education

J.D., University of Miami School of Law

B.A., University of Arizona

Admitted to Practice

• U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York

• U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York

• Court of Appeals, Second Circuit

• New York