Mr. Lapp is a partner in Seyfarth Shaw LLP’s Chicago and Century City offices. While his practice centers on high-consequence litigation with particular emphasis on class and collective actions, Mr. Lapp’s unique combination of legal expertise, business acumen, and strategic focus has made him a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 companies in a variety of contexts, ranging from strategic counseling and policymaking to high-sensitivity boardroom investigations. An active litigator, Mr. Lapp’s practice currently extends across the nation, with recent victories secured in significant matters in California, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, and New York. An experienced advocate for employers before state and federal courts and agencies, Mr. Lapp offers deep expertise in all areas of labor and employment law. Mr. Lapp has also served as outside counsel and independent counsel to Boards of Directors and C-level executives in connection with high-sensitivity internal investigations.
His litigation experience includes class and collective actions brought under the WARN Act and ERISA, individual and collective complex discrimination actions that pose extreme reputational risk to high-value corporate brands, and bet-the-company wage and hour cases that represent critical threats to companies’ operational models. Mr. Lapp has successfully defended his clients against allegations of worker misclassification, discrimination, harassment, breach of contract, and whistleblower retaliation, before regulatory agencies such as the EEOC and NLRB as well as state and federal courts. In addition to his defense-side experience, which extends across the full lifecycle of dispute resolution, Mr. Lapp has also represented Fortune 500 companies in affirmative commercial litigation, non-compete and trade secrets litigation, and provided advice and counseling on risks relating to consumer protection issues. Mr. Lapp’s diverse, cross-sector corporate clientele spans logistics, retail, consumer products manufacturing, financial services, and technology services and products. The breadth of Mr. Lapp’s subject-matter expertise and practical experience is bounded only by the wide-ranging challenges facing employers with national or global operations.
A cum laude graduate of the University of Wisconsin School of Law, Mr. Lapp previously clerked for the Hon. Daniel A. Manion on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Mr. Lapp is a contributing member of several Seyfarth Specialty Groups, including its Appellate Practice Team, Whistleblower Team, Employment Whistleblower Team, Fraud & Abuse, False Claims and Internal Investigations Team, and Corporate Internal Investigations Team. Outside the firm, Mr. Lapp currently serves on the Corporate Governance Committee of the American Bar Association (ABA) as well as the Employment Disputes Committee of the International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution (CPR). Mr. Lapp speaks and publishes on a variety of issues facing employers, and he has authored law review articles on significant labor issues in scholarly journals including The University of Wisconsin Law Review and The University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor Law.
End-to-End Litigation Strategist
In high-stakes situations, companies call on Mr. Lapp for his proven ability to architect innovative and creative strategies for victory at any point in the full lifecycle of dispute resolution. Before, during, or after litigation, Mr. Lapp’s unique outlook on risk mitigation and management has provided an invaluable perspective for employers. Clients have praised his collaborative approach, which focuses on collaborating with in-house counsel to insulate clients from risk.
As outside counsel in highly sensitive boardroom investigations -- often precursors to media-sensitive litigation -- Mr. Lapp leverages his proven expertise as a litigator to isolate the critical, controlling issues. In these challenges, Mr. Lapp has succeeded by articulating and executing workable plans for swift, comprehensive, effective investigations that eliminate the core litigation risks. As a litigator, Mr. Lapp’s depth of procedural expertise and expansive command of legal tradecraft translate to an agile and aggressive style through every phase of litigation. Sophisticated motion practice and customized, targeted discovery are hallmarks of his creative style. In the last five years, Mr. Lapp has spearheaded the articulation and execution of a full battery of litigation strategies: early phase motions to eliminate claims and limit exposure; key discovery motions to control the pace and scope of discovery or to compel favorable evidence and testimony; Kolstad and Faragher/Ellerth affirmative defenses to eliminate vicarious liability; optimized positioning and strategic advantages gained through counterclaims, venue motions, and motions to bifurcate; and tenacious, focused post-verdict strategies built on Rule 12, 50, and 59 motions.
Building Solid Foundations -- for Victories that Appellate Courts Uphold
Mr. Lapp’s extensive experience with sophisticated utilization of civil procedure builds upon his early experience clerking for the Seventh Circuit, and he has delivered a notable string of appellate victories in the last three years. Often, these appellate rulings validate the sound legal analysis and procedural expertise that drive Mr. Lapp’s approach to litigation.
In 2011, Mr. Lapp led the defense team in Ellis and Price v. DHL Express, in a case that alleged violation of the federal WARN Act in connection with the closure of several Chicago-area DHL facilities. The Seventh Circuit affirmed the District Court’s grant of summary judgment, and the U.S. Supreme court denied plaintiff’s petition for certiorari.
In 2012 and 2013, Mr. Lapp led Seyfarth’s appellate work in Weiss v. DHL Express and delivered oral argument before the First Circuit. While the plaintiff’s initial complaint alleged unlawful denial of bonus and severance as well as common law counts for violation of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, detrimental reliance, and unjust enrichment, Seyfarth deployed a strategy to dispose of claims separately: having secured the dismissal of a key issue -- the statutory wage claim -- through motion practice, a single-count breach of contract claim proceeded to trial. While the jury found for the plaintiff, Mr. Lapp led the Seyfarth team in crafting successful Rule 12, 50, and 59 motions; after briefing and oral argument by Mr. Lapp, the First Circuit overturned the jury verdict and entered judgment in favor of DHL.
As lead counsel for Gillette in Cicvara v. Gillette, Mr. Lapp again advocated for employers’ rights to regulate discretionary compensation in cases where employees are terminated for good cause. Finding that plaintiff had forfeited certain compensation after engaging in a pattern of “gross misconduct” that was “materially and demonstrably injurious” to the client, the Second Circuit upheld grant of summary judgment by the district court.
Most recently, Mr. Lapp and his team secured a full affirmation by the First Judicial District of Illinois, which upheld lower court’s grant of summary judgment in McGirr v. Continental Casualty Company, et al., where a terminated high-ranking executive brought claims of defamation and tortious interference based on alleged defamatory statements arising from the company’s internal investigation. Here, the defense theories -- advanced by Mr. Lapp’s team early on and supported by targeted written and oral discovery -- paid dividends, as the Court relied heavily on plaintiffs’ admissions during depositions regarding undisputed facts as compelling evidence in favor of the defendant, both at the summary judgment stage, again in the appellate phase. The Illinois State Supreme Court denied review of the appellate ruling, further validating the Seyfarth team’s total victory.
Measurable Results through Analytics, Technology, and Boundary-Spanning Expertise
Mr. Lapp’s ability to integrate analytics and technology into the substantive legal strategy and the process-oriented management inherent in legal services is a significant key to his success. In cases that demand sophisticated analytics, statistics, or subject-matter expertise in disparate disciplines, Mr. Lapp’s unwavering focus on results and his strategic ability to translate legal insights into actionable plans add up to successful leadership of cross-functional teams.
The ability to articulate the quickest path to the client’s optimal risk position is a key differentiator in Mr. Lapp’s approach. Mr. Lapp’s case teams are able to quickly parse complex fact patterns, pinpoint the needed analytics, and marshal the appropriate subject-matter expertise and/or competencies to formulate data-driven rebuttals to inaccurate, unsupported, or overly broad plaintiff claims. Understanding that litigation represents just one avenue in the landscape of business risks, opportunities, and challenges facing employers today, Mr. Lapp places appropriate emphasis on right-sized discovery, cost-effective pathways to victory, and the importance of leveraging technology to manage risk. Mr. Lapp’s data-driven approach has proven particularly effective in class and collective actions, where success often depends on thorough, accurate, and targeted analysis of large sets of data.
Recently, several Seyfarth defense teams led by Mr. Lapp secured a series of favorable settlements in high-stakes litigation pertaining to a wide range of legal issues. These behind-the-doors victories were made possible by Mr. Lapp’s ability to synthesize disparate sources of expertise and to craft litigation tactics around those analytics to create pressure points that drive cases to resolution. In a representative example of strategic application of analytics in litigation, Mr. Lapp conceptualized and directed the build-out of a custom database to synthesize forensic data from timekeeping, file management, and physical building access systems, which yielded compelling, quantitative rebuttal arguments to plaintiffs’ inflated calculations of unpaid overtime and off-the-clock work. This analysis was a key factor in settlement negotiations that ultimately resulted in a final payout that amounted to less than 1% of the total exposure.
Whether it’s the utilization of sophisticated eDiscovery methods and advanced linguistics to craft defensible ESI filtering, or the application of econometric and psychiatric expertise to formulate a comprehensive damages analysis model, Mr. Lapp identifies critical opportunities for technology and analytics -- and empowers his case teams to deliver victory via creative, innovative pathways.
