William T. Payne
wpayne@stemberfeinstein.com

William T. Payne is a partner in Stember Feinstein Doyle & Payne, and specializes in litigating class action lawsuits that seek to protect retirement benefits of employees and retirees. 

Over the past twenty-five years, Bill has served as counsel for retirees or employees in more than eighty class action lawsuits throughout the United States, many of which challenged cuts in company-provided retiree health care benefits.  For example, in 2006, Bill was appointed as class counsel to represent nearly 600,000 former UAW members (and spouses of members) in actions against General Motors and Ford that were worth billions of dollars.  See UAW v. GM, 497 F.3d 615 (6th Cir. 2007).  In other consolidated cases, Bill served as one of the counsel for a class of former employees of Continental Can who were terminated to prevent them from becoming eligible for pension and other retirement benefits. The dispute turned into a nine-year legal battle that ultimately resulted in $415 million settlement.

Bill received his law degree from the University of California--Berkeley (Boalt Hall) in 1979, after having graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh in 1975.  After three years of practicing labor law (first in Washington, D.C., and then in San Francisco), Bill served as Assistant General Counsel of the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh between 1982 and 1991.  For most of those nine years, he had primary responsibility for the Union’s ERISA litigation throughout the United States.  From 1991 to 2006, Bill was partner and later Of Counsel to the firm of Schwartz, Steinsapir, Dohrmann & Sommers LLP in Los Angeles and in Pittsburgh.

Bill actively participates in the American Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Section, and serves as chairperson of the Subcommittee for Benefit Claims and Individual Rights within that Section’s Benefits Committee.  He is also member of the Lawyers Coordinating Committee for the AFL-CIO, and of the National Employment Lawyers Association.  Bill is a Charter Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel, and also served on the Board of the Los Angeles County Bar Association.

Bill has also authored numerous papers relating to labor and employment law, such as “Battling for Benefits,” Trial (December 2005) (with J. Stember and S. Pincus);  “Protecting Rights to Early Retirement Benefits,” 2 Employee Rights Quarterly 58 (2001);  “Retiree Health Benefits: Sixth Circuit Deals the Retirees Out,” 14 The Labor Lawyer 475 (1999) (with S. Sacher); “Lawsuits Challenging Termination or Modification of Retiree Welfare Benefits,” 10 The Labor Lawyer 91 (1994); and  “Enjoining Employers Pending Arbitration,” 3 Ind.Rel.L.J. 169 (1979).  He has served as both a Contributing Author and Chapter Editor of Employee Benefits Law (BNA Books), authored by the ABA Labor Section’s Benefits Committee.  He frequently lectures on labor and employment law topics at educational conferences.

Bill is admitted to practice in all state courts in California and Pennsylvania, as well as in numerous federal district and circuit courts, and before the United States Supreme Court.