Dove A. E. Burns

Overview

Dove A. E. Burns focuses her practice on labor and employment and commercial litigation.

Ms. Burns’ broad depth of experience includes defending clients in a variety of areas including class actions, complex wage and hour matters, discrimination and harassment claims, trade secrets, crypto/blockchain, sexual misconduct, fiduciary claims, and restrictive covenant disputes.

She is an accomplished trial attorney with experience defending corporate clients from Fortune 500 companies to individual executives. Ms. Burns also routinely represents professional service providers, multibillion-dollar international restaurant chains, hospitals, municipalities, housing authorities, nonprofits, higher education institutions, and boards of directors in a variety of high-exposure matters.

She defends clients against alleged violations of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), Title VII, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), False Claims Act and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). She frequently represents employers before various state and federal agencies including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), New York State Division of Human Rights, Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities and the U.S. Departments of Labor and Health. She also handles claims under Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI) and Directors and Officers (D&O) and Errors and Omissions (E&O) policies.

Additionally, she proactively provides guidance to employers concerning everyday labor and employment issues including noncompete agreements, as well as assistance in drafting employment and severance agreements, policy manuals and other pertinent documents. Boards and corporate officers rely on her advice as to business disputes, start-ups, and business dissolution issues. Ms. Burns, rated AV® Preeminent™ by Martindale-Hubbell, also facilitates training to help employers mitigate risk. She has successfully settled numerous disputes through arbitration, mediation, and conciliation in addition to trying numerous cases to verdict.

In her professional liability work, she represents directors and officers in high stakes claims litigation and boards of directors, architects, engineers, real estate professionals, property managers and representatives regulated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in other negligence claims. She has a wealth of experience handling complex board disputes, including those in the cyber realm related to blockchain and cryptocurrency. She also has defended clients in securities and antitrust class actions and matters involving condominium and co-op disputes.

Ms. Burns is a known leader within both the EPL and women’s legal communities. Notably, she founded the Women in Insurance Leadership ExecuSummit a decade ago, an annual industry sold-out event she continues to co-chair, and separately, has served as co-chair of the Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI) ExecuSummit for the past 14 years. Ms. Burns is a much sought-after speaker and has spoken and moderated at numerous Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS) International conferences and Claims Liability Management conferences, as well as served as the featured speaker at various employment law and D&O conferences and meetings. She also speaks internationally on a number of employment law and insurance topics. A native of Hawaii, Ms. Burns is often quoted by the media and is a frequent contributor to a variety of prestigious legal publications.

Professional Memberships

• Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS)
• Claims and Litigation Management Alliance (CLM)
• National Association of Women Lawyers
• New York City Association of Insurance Women (NYCAIW)