Cohen Milstein

Christine Webber, a Partner at the Firm and a member of the Civil Rights & Employment practice group, joined Cohen Milstein in 1997.  She is the Partner in charge of the law clerk and summer associate program. 

Ms. Webber represents plaintiffs in class action employment discrimination and Fair Labor Standards Act cases.  Ms. Webber's current docket includes Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (N.D. Cal.), a certified class action for over 1.6 million current and former female employees of Wal-Mart with complaints of discrimination in pay and promotion; O’Connor v. BASF, (N.J.), a certified class action alleging age discrimination by BASF in a series of RIF’s; and In re Tyson Foods FLSA MDL, (M.D. Ga.), a collective action involving FLSA claims at over 40 Tyson chicken processing plants.
 
She represented plaintiffs in Beck v. The Boeing Co. (W.D. Wash.), a class action alleging sex discrimination in compensation and promotions which settled in 2004 for $72.5 million.  She was also lead counsel in Hnot v. Willis (S.D.N.Y.), representing a class of women at the vice-president level and above whose challenge to sex discrimination in compensation resulted in a settlement averaging $50,000 per class member in 2008.  She was counsel in Trotter v. Perdue (D. Del.), representing plaintiffs who were wrongly denied payment of overtime wages, and obtaining a $10 million settlement.  
 
In 2004 and 2007, Ms. Webber was named one of the Top Lawyers in Washington, D.C. by Washingtonian Magazine and was named one of the 2007 Washington, D.C. Superlawyers in the Civil Rights category.
 
Prior to joining Cohen Milstein, Ms. Webber received a Women's Law and Public Policy fellowship and worked for four years at the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs in their Equal Employment Opportunity Project.  She worked on a variety of employment discrimination cases, and focused in particular on the sexual harassment class action Neal v. Director, D.C. Department of Corrections, et al.  Ms. Webber participated in the trial of this ground-breaking sexual harassment class action in 1995.  Ms. Webber also tried the race discrimination case Cooper v. Paychex (E.D. Va.), and successfully defended the plaintiffs' verdict before the Fourth Circuit.
 
Ms. Webber is a member of the National Employment Lawyers' Association (NELA) and co-chair of their Class Action Committee.  She is also co-chair of the Class Action Sub-committee of the D.C. Bar Labor and Employment Law Section.  She speaks regularly at CLE programs on employment discrimination and class actions, including presentations for NELA.
 
She graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Government (magna cum laude, 1988) and the University of Michigan Law School (J.D., magna cum laude, 1991, Order of the Coif).  Following law school, Ms. Webber clerked for the Honorable Hubert L. Will, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Illinois.  
 
Ms. Webber is admitted to practice in Illinois and the District of Columbia.