"The best times in my career have been when I am fighting like hell to win justice for a hard-working person or their family, whether my client is an airline employee who has raised aviation-safety concerns, a finance professional who has stuck his neck out to stop fraud on investors, or a health-care executive who has refused to put profit before the needs of patients. Representing deserving individuals against wealthy corporations, whether in retaliation cases or in seeking financial rewards for reporting wrongdoing, is what energizes me more than anything else I do. And I get to do it every day, which is why I love my job."
"Fighting against injustice and unfair business practices has been the main focus of my life for nearly forty years."
David J. Marshall was a founding partner of Katz, Marshall & Banks (now Katz Banks Kumin) in 2006. He is now retired as an active partner but continues as Partner Emeritus and Of Counsel, working with the firm on certain whistleblower tips before the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
Mr. Marshall has successfully represented hundreds of whistleblowers and other employees in the financial, pharmaceutical, nuclear, aviation, railroad, healthcare, medical-device, retail and other industries. He represented some clients in winning awards under the whistleblower-reward programs administered by the SEC, CFTC and DOJ, including one who, in April 2021, was awarded $3.2 million by the SEC for supplying critical information that led to a successful enforcement action against a large financial institution.
Mr. Marshall achieved success for other clients in cases arising under federal and state laws that protect employees against retaliation from their employers for reporting corporate wrongdoing. His important victories in whistleblower cases involved entities such as the Architect of the Capitol (asbestos), Deutsche Bank (financial reporting), the Brown’s Ferry Nuclear Plant (nuclear safety), Lockheed Martin (defense procurement), and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (asbestos). In 2015-2016, Mr. Marshall represented thirteen flight attendants in a whistleblower-retaliation complaint against United Airlines resulting in a March 2016 settlement that reinstated all of them to their jobs.
Over the course of his career, Ms. Marshall established himself as a top whistleblower lawyer, consistently won recognition as a top whistleblower lawyer by Super Lawyers, Washingtonian Magazine and Best Lawyers©. He is rated by Martindale-Hubbell as “AV Preeminent,” its highest possible peer-review rating. In addition to his legal practice, Mr. Marshall has been very active in professional and social-justice organizations, including the American Bar Association, the Public Justice Foundation, Farmworker Justice, and the Government Accountability Project. He has also provided training to government agencies regarding developments in the nation’s whistleblower laws, has appeared in numerous national and local media as an expert in whistleblower law, and has written extensively on whistleblower issues.
Mr. Marshall earned his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1980. From 1981 to 1984, he was a staff attorney with the Political Rights Defense Fund, where he represented trade unionists and political activists nationwide in civil liberties, free speech, defamation, and political asylum litigation. He then worked for 12 years as a steelworker, garment worker, freight railroad conductor and refinery worker, and was a rank-and-file union activist in some of the nation’s largest industries and unions, before returning to the full-time practice of law in 1997.
