Mr. Smeltzer has over 25 years of federal and state court experience in all phases of labor and employment, commercial, and non-patent intellectual property litigation and counseling.
He
has handled countless Title VII, ADEA, ADA, FLSA, NLRA, ERISA and FMLA matters
before the EEOC, the Illinois Department of Human Rights, the Illinois Human
Rights Commission, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, the U.S. Department
of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, and state and federal courts.
In
addition, Mr. Smeltzer regularly represents clients in cases involving
employment related torts (e.g. defamation, breach of fiduciary duty, tortious
interference); wrongful discharge, employee handbook, and wage and sales
commission disputes. He is an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University School of
Law, where he has taught comprehensive courses in Labor Law, Employment Law and
Employment Discrimination, and has contributed to several major treatises in
the area, including Holloway & Leech, Employment Termination — Rights and
Remedies (BNA 1993) and Tobias, Litigating Wrongful Discharge Claims,
(Callahan, 1989). He also conducts sexual harassment investigations and training.
With
respect to commercial litigation, Mr. Smeltzer regularly handles complex
restrictive covenant and trade secret litigation, contract disputes and
business torts litigation in state and federal courts throughout the country.
He regularly handles trademark, trade dress and copyright infringement cases,
as well as related state law actions for unfair competition, trade secret
misappropriation and common law infringement, in state and federal courts
throughout the country. Mr. Smeltzer has experience drafting and negotiating
licenses and continually prosecutes trademark and copyright registrations
before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Copyright Office. He also
handles appeals, cancellations and other proceedings before the TTAB.
Mr. Smeltzer
holds the AV® Peer Review Rating from Martindale-Hubbell, its highest rating
for ethics and legal ability and has been named an Illinois “Super Lawyer”
since 2013. He received his J.D. from the University of Cincinnati College
of Law in 1991 and his B.S. from Miami University in 1987. Mr. Smeltzer is
licensed to practice in the State of Illinois and before the Northern and
Central Districts of Illinois, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Circuit Court of
Appeals, Western District of Michigan, Eastern District of Wisconsin and the
District of Colorado.