Jeffrey S. Bagnell, employment law, civil rights, contracts, litigation and appeals

Professional Profile

Jeffrey S. Bagnell

  • Boston College Law School, J.D.
  • College of the Holy Cross, B.A., Honors Program
  • Institute of European Studies, Madrid

Mr. Bagnell has more than fifteen years' experience advising and representing individual and corporate clients in the areas of employment law, civil rights, contract disputes, and related litigation and appeals. He has been consistently rated among the top five-percent of attorneys practicing in Connecticut. His practice is almost entirely devoted to civil litigation and appeals.

He has argued cases in the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, United States District and Bankruptcy Courts in New York and Connecticut, as well as the Connecticut Supreme Court. He has tried jury and non-jury cases to successful verdicts, and recently obtained two of the largest Family and Medical Leave Act decisions in the nation. Articles on some of the cases he has handled have appeared in the National Law Journal, Lawyers Weekly USA, and the Connecticut Law Tribune. He is a frequent speaker at bar association events, including the Connecticut Bar Association's annual meetings. He has authored articles on evidence issues arising under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, litigating cases under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA), as well as recent Supreme Court jurisprudence on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He was a contributing editor of the American Bar Association's Model Employment Law Jury Instructions, Second Edition, as well as the American Bar Association's Employment Litigation Handbook.

Mr. Bagnell is a member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the United States District Court for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and Connecticut. He is admitted to practice in the state bars of Connecticut and Massachusetts. Previously in his career he served as associate counsel for Executone Information Systems, Inc., a $300 million, publicly-traded communications company in Milford, Connecticut, with over 2,000 employees, where he advised management on a broad array of issues involving international and domestic business transactions, and as an attorney with Garrison, Levin-Epstein, Chimes & Richardson, P.C. in New Haven, Connecticut, a firm that specializes in civil litigation, and white-collar criminal defense.

He has served as a member of the executive committee of the Connecticut Bar Association's Labor and Employment Section, and is a Sustaining Member of the National Employment Lawyers Association and the American Bar Association's Section on Litigation.

His reported cases include Doe v. Norwalk Community College, 2007 WL 2066497 (D. Conn. July 16, 2007), Boland v. Town of Newington, 2007 WL 128915 (D. Conn. 2007); Dupee v. Klaff's, Inc., 462 F. Supp.2d 233 (D. Conn. 2006); Cendant Corporation v. Commissioner of Connecticut Department of Labor, 2004 Conn. Super. LEXIS 523, aff'd 276 Conn. 16 (2005); Palma v. Pharmedica Communications, Inc., 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21227, 2003 US Dist. LEXIS 21160; Farrior v. Waterford Board of Education, 277 F.3d 633 (2d Cir. 2002), cert. denied, 536 U.S. 958 (2002); and Carrano v. Harborside Healthcare Corporation, 199 F.R.D. 459 (2001).

Mr. Bagnell attended the Institute of European Studies in Madrid, Spain and speaks Spanish.

Admissions

  • United States Supreme Court, 2002
  • United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 2000
  • United States District Court, Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and Connecticut, 1998
  • State Bar of Connecticut, 1993
  • State Bar of Massachusetts, 1992

Publications

  • Contributing Editor, Employment Litigation Handbook, Second Edition, American Bar Association, 2007
  • Contributing Editor, Model Employment Law Jury Instructions, Second Edition, American Bar Association, 2006
  • Author, "Magic Words Not Needed: Second Circuit's Pleading Standard Too Strict in Swierkiewicz," Connecticut Law Tribune, Labor and Employment Issue, May 2003
  • Author, "The Stray Remarks Doctrine After Reeves," CBA Labor & Employment Law Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 3, Fall 2000 (reprinted by Connecticut Bar Association, March 2002, and National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA), New England Regional Conference, April 2003)
  • Co-author, "Litigating Cases Under the Family and Medical Leave Act," Practicing Law Institute, 30th Annual Labor and Employment Law Symposium, New York, New York October 2000 and 2001
  • Legal briefs on Statute of Frauds and other topics published in legal journal, The Leveler, Spring and Summer 2001

Speaker

  • Connecticut Bar Association seminar: The E-Smoking Gun: Digital Forensics, E-Discovery, and Spoliation of Electronically Stored Information (12 September 2008)
  • "Discovery Issues Relating to Electronically-stored Information (ESI)," 2008 New England Regional Conference of the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) on May 9-10 in Boston, MA.
  • "The Use of Mock Trials and Jury Consultants," annual meeting of the National Employment Lawyers Association in Atlanta, Georgia on June 27, 2008.
  • "Connecticut FMLA Update 2006," Council on Education in Management, March 2006, Trumbull, Connecticut
  • "Annual Employment Law Summary," 130th Annual Connecticut Bar Association Annual Meeting, New Haven, Connecticut, June 13, 2005
  • "Navigating a Case at the Department of Labor: Where are the Shoals?" 130th Annual Connecticut Bar Association Annual Meeting, New Haven, Connecticut, June 13, 2005
  • "Expert Witnesses," National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA), New England Regional Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, April 2003
  • National Business Institute seminar on Family and Medical Leave Act, October 2002, Hartford, Connecticut
  • Connecticut Bar Association Annual Symposium on Employment Law, New Britain, Connecticut, March 2002

Press

Honors