Vedder Price

Vedder Thinking

Nicholas Anaclerio

Shareholder

222 North LaSalle Street Chicago, Illinois 60601

+1 (312) 609 7538

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Nicholas Anaclerio

Shareholder

Nicholas Anaclerio is a Shareholder and a member of the firm’s Labor and Employment practice area.

Mr. Anaclerio has decades of experience as a Labor and Employment trial and appellate attorney helping clients in the defense of wage and hour, discrimination, and other employment class actions, lawsuits and charges involving alleged sexual harassment and retaliation, gender, race, age, national origin, disability and religious discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Illinois Whistleblower Act, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002 and related state and federal laws. His practice has likewise included hundreds of restrictive covenant and trade secret misappropriation disputes, claims and lawsuits, including numerous high stakes temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction hearings.

He is a seasoned trial attorney with extensive first-chair jury trial, bench trial and arbitration hearing experience. He provides practical and insightful human resource counseling to management clients facing ongoing employee relations and employment law compliance issues, and he has represented corporate and institutional clients in a wide range of industries and professions.

Mr. Anaclerio regularly publishes and speaks on employment topics including the ethical dimension of restrictive covenant and trade secret disputes, wage and hour compliance, sensitive workplace investigations, generational workforce issues, employee privacy, workplace retaliation claims and many others.

He was ranked by Chambers USA from 2009 to 2013, named an "Illinois Super Lawyer" from 2012 to 2021 and recognized by Leading Lawyers from 2017 to 2023. The Legal 500 United States recommended Mr. Anaclerio in the Labor and Employment Disputes (including collective actions): Defense category from 2016 to 2024 and the Labor and Employment Litigation category in 2015.

Nicholas Anaclerio

Shareholder

Education

  • Loyola University Chicago School of Law, J.D., 1984
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison, B.A., 1981, with honors

Nicholas Anaclerio

Shareholder

Bar Admissions

  • Illinois, 1984

Court Admissions

  • Supreme Court of Illinois, 1984
  • U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, including Trial Bar, 1984
  • U.S. District Court, Southern District of Illinois, 1999
  • U.S. District Court, Central District of Illinois, 2001
  • U.S. District Court, Northern District of Indiana, 2001
  • U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas, 2007
  • U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, 1987

Nicholas Anaclerio

Shareholder

Nicholas Anaclerio

Shareholder

Nicholas Anaclerio

Shareholder

Experience

  • Leveraged expedited discovery to expose a former employee group’s complex scheme of deception and wage theft, put the former employee group out of business and negotiated settlement terms including comprehensive noncompete and nonsolicitation covenants and monetary relief surpassing the client’s total legal expenses.
  • After exposing two top-performing sales people’s duplicity and breaches of fiduciary duty, compelled their terminations by a rival business, which agreed in settling to cease doing business in the disputed territory.
  • Won both a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against a client’s former pharmacy salesperson and a competitor alleged to have misappropriated confidential and proprietary information for unlawful competitive use.
  • After winning partial summary judgment, and prevailing in a motion to strike a former high-ranking executive’s jury demand, leveraged additional favorable rulings during trial to achieve an extremely advantageous, confidential settlement in a change-of-control severance and legacy bonus dispute.
  • Successfully resisted Chicago federal court preliminary injunction proceedings brought to enforce an overly-broad covenant not to compete governed by Rhode Island law, persuading the court that even partial enforcement was inappropriate and that there was no trade secrets misappropriation to warrant injunctive relief.
  • Successfully prosecuted a Phoenix federal action to enforce a client’s post-employment covenants with a former employee who joined, but was ultimately forced to separate from, a client’s competitor.
  • Negotiated the successful resolution of a Wisconsin trade secret misappropriation and injunction action brought against a client’s new employee by prosecuting the client’s meritorious trademark infringement claims against the employee’s former employer.
  • Obtained favorable judgment for a psychiatric hospital client as a matter of law in a workers’ compensation retaliation case of a mental health specialist terminated after on-the-job injuries rendered him unfit for full work duties.
  • Obtained settlement in a whistleblowers’ suit under the Coast Guard Authorization Act of 1984 on favorable terms before trial.
  • Obtained dismissal of admiralty wage claims by marine crewmembers of a gaming vessel seeking a maritime lien against the vessel.
  • Obtained dismissals of 16 more FLSA overtime claims on limitations grounds.
  • Obtained eight more dismissal claims as a discovery sanction.
  • Obtained summary judgments against the remaining 50 Plaintiffs by successfully arguing that their overtime claims were barred as a matter of law by the FLSA's "seaman" exemption, though the boat on which they worked rarely ever sailed.
  • Obtained summary judgment for defendants in 18 overtime claims joined in an FLSA collective action.
  • Obtained dismissal of an in rem wage suit by members of a gaming boat's marine crew who sought to impress a lien for unpaid overtime wages on the vessel before client was incurred any discovery expense.
  • Obtained dismissal of in rem Federal Maritime Lien Act overtime wage case on the grounds that the court lacked federal admiralty jurisdiction without incurring any discovery expenses.
  • Obtained summary judgment in an unusual patron sexual harassment case.
  • Obtained a summary judgment for client in a Fair Labor Standards Act retaliatory discharge matter, and then won its affirmance following the plaintiff’s appeal to the Seventh Circuit.
  • Obtained dismissal with prejudice of plaintiff’s reverse gender discrimination case as a discovery sanction followed by obtaining the Seventh Circuit’s affirmance of the unusual result.
  • Obtained partial summary judgment for defendant/employer on plaintiff’s sexual harassment, gender, and pregnancy discrimination claims. Additionally, negotiated a stipulated dismissal with prejudice of the remaining disability discrimination claim.
  • Obtained the dismissal with prejudice on all of the Plaintiff’s claims against client, then won the plaintiff’s appeal. Dismissal included a novel application of Illinois procedural rules requiring diligence in the plaintiff’s service of summons to a removed federal ADA case.
  • Obtained successful jury verdict in an age discrimination and wrongful discharge case by a hospital’s former business manager.