PENNSYLVANIA RECORD

The Pennsylvania law firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney announced

Tuesday that it has named shareholder Gregory A. Miller, currently chair of the firm’s Labor & Employment division, as its new general counsel.

Miller, a 20-year veteran of the firm who has previously served in a number of leadership capacities, succeeds shareholder John Leathers, who served as the firm’s general counsel for nearly a decade.

“Much of the experience I’ve gained during my career will be useful in advancing the firm’s goals as inside counsel,” Miller, who works out of the firm’s Pittsburgh office, said in a statement.

In his own statement, Jack Barbour, the law firm’s chief executive officer, said that, “Given Greg’s excellent legal skills and analytical abilities, combined with his historical knowledge of the firm, he is an ideal fit for this role.”

Miller’s practice has encompassed a range of employer counseling and employment litigation matters, the law firm stated in its announcement.

Miller, who received his law degree from Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law, has been named among the best lawyers in America for the past three years, according to the firm.

According to his work bio, Miller spends much of his practice defending employers against discrimination, retaliation, wage payment, civil rights, defamation and wrongful termination claims.

He also focuses on litigation involving trade secret law, shareholder disputes, and intellectual property ownership issues.

Miller, who interned with Buchanan’s Pittsburgh office and went on to spend his entire legal career with the firm, has had some major victories during the course of his career thus far, according to his professional biography.

This included a defense verdict he secured for Nike Inc. following a federal trial in a case alleging reverse discrimination, hostile work environment and retaliation.

Another professional highlight was the securing of a consensual temporary restraining order and subsequent final order on behalf of an insurance agency prohibiting and ex-salesperson and her new employer from soliciting former customers.

As part of that negotiated settlement, Miller’s bio states, the client was reimbursed $140,000 for 100 percent of attorneys’ fees plus the value of lost clients and loss of good will.

Miller has also been involved in a good number of class actions and Fair Labor Standards Act cases.

He once defendant a national mortgage company in a nationwide FLSA collective action alleging wrongful classification of loan officers as non-exempt.

That case, which occurred at the federal court in Minnesota, resolved at the close of discovery with a settlement approved by a U.S. District Court judge.

Closer to home, Miller once successfully represented a medical device company against claims by a former employee over ownership and inventor status following the sale of the device in question.

The issue in the underlying litigation was ultimately decided by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in Philadelphia.

Summary judgment in that case was eventually granted to the defendants on all counts, Miller’s biography states.

Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney employs more than 450 lawyers and government relations professionals in the country.

It has offices in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Florida, Virginia, Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and California.