In addition to handling ERISA claims, the Garner Firm handles several other types of claims. We do various types of employment litigation. We occasionally take on discrimination and retaliation cases related to age, sex, race, national origin, discrimination, and things like that. We handle wage and hour claims. Wage and hour claims are claims where somebody’s been wrongly denied overtime that they’re entitled or they have not been paid all of the wages they have earned and that they’ve been entitled to. And we handle those cases both on an individual and on a class or collective action basis for large groups of people. I handle severance agreements, unemployment contracts, and covenants not to compete. And we also do a fair amount of insurance litigation. If you have an insurance policy that’s not governed by ERISA, perhaps you bought a life insurance policy from a broker many years ago, or you bought a disability insurance policy on your own from a broker, and that claim’s been denied. We handle those claims. They don’t arise under ERISA. They arise under state insurance law. And in some cases, in Pennsylvania in particular, I think there’s something known as a bad faith insurance claim, which allows you to recover additional damages in addition to the insurance proceeds that you claim you’re owed.
And in Pennsylvania, that can include punitive damages, attorney’s fees, and significant interest. So we do those sorts of cases. We also handle military service member claims under a statute known as USERRA. USERRA is a federal law that provides that individuals who are on military leave of absence, whether they’ve been activated to go serve in a war or they’re a member of the National Guard and doing drills for a weekend or a week. They have various employment rights, and oftentimes employers misapply that statute and deny people the rights they’re entitled to under USAREF. And so we handle those claims as well.