Rob Frankhouser is a founding partner of GardnerFrankhouser. He is a former human resources executive and management labor and employment lawyer with nearly two decades of experience at an S&P 500 company. He puts his corporate experience to work for employees in all facets of his employment law practice, with a particular emphasis on wage and hour matters involving the misclassification of independent contractors, employees misclassified as exempt from overtime, and failure to pay overtime.
Prior to forming GardnerFrankhouser, Rob served as Senior Counsel and Vice President, Employee Relations for one of the nation’s leading energy companies. In this role, he supervised a staff of seven professionals; and, among his responsibilities, he oversaw the company’s employee relations and employment litigation, including managing the defense of wage and hour class actions.
In addition to managing litigation in the state and federal courts of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, Rob has handled employment-related arbitrations and appeared before state and federal administrative agencies responsible for enforcement of anti-discrimination, harassment, and overtime laws. His experience also includes conducting and supervising hundreds of internal investigations into alleged failures to pay overtime, discrimination and retaliation, fraud, theft of trade secrets, and embezzlement, among others.
Rob was the principal architect of the company’s non-compete and non-solicitation provisions, which withstood judicial challenges to validity and enforceability in state and federal courts. He was also responsible for litigation strategy in cases brought against former employees for breach of non-competition covenants, theft of trade secrets, and misuse of confidential information acquired during the course of their employment.
Rob has extensive experience dealing with situations in which new employees are subject to non-competition agreements with former employers that allegedly prohibited them from going to work for the company. He approached these cases by crafting and negotiating practical, business-oriented solutions that addressed the concerns of the former employer while allowing the new employee to thrive in his or her chosen occupation.
Rob’s in-house experience affords him a valuable perspective when advising clients on employment law issues. He can distinguish a good claim from one that lacks merit; and he is particularly well qualified to conduct the due diligence necessary to advise a client on the appropriate, practical, and realistic course of action that will enable them to achieve the best result possible.