Foster, Richard H.

Ms. Hitchcock Cross has been concentrating on employment, business, fraud and civil rights law for more than 30 years. Her clients include C-Suite and other executives, managers, and personnel directors; college administrators and professors, school administrators and teachers; judges, court commissioners, assistant district attorneys and public defenders; fire chiefs, police chiefs, police officers, chief deputies and deputy sheriffs; physicians, nurses, and health care administrators and workers; accountants and others with fiduciary responsibilities, such as stockbrokers; office workers, blue collar workers, truckers, service employees; and all other employees, both in the private and in the federal, state, and municipal public sectors; and consultants, entrepreneurs, and independent contractors.

In addition to litigation, she also focuses on counseling clients through pre-termination intervention, severance agreements, non-compete agreements and other restrictive covenants, employment contracts and key employee agreements, commission agreements and disputes, and job counseling, especially when “the handwriting is on the wall”.  Counseling and negotiation may include particular attention to reputation and career transition, restrictive covenants, deferred compensation, stock options and grants, special tax considerations for highly paid individuals, benefit transition, and consulting arrangements. She gives attention to issues of social media, press and internal announcements, and employment references.

Ms. Hitchcock Cross has a reputation for handling matters where extraordinary remedies are required, such as injunctive relief, declaratory judgments, mandamus, writs of prohibition, and other emergency equitable actions. Her communications background has led her to succeed in defamation, slander, and libel litigation and resolution.

Ms. Hitchcock Cross has a concentration in whistleblower actions. She recently completed a Federal False Claims Act qui tam action that resolved for over $25 million, her third False Claims Act recovery in less than a year. She frequently pursues Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower actions and resolutions, either on a confidential settlement or a litigation basis.   Federal contracts, as well as compliance with federal laws and regulations including FARs, DFARs, ITAR, FOCI, SEC, IRS, Medicare, Dodd-Frank are primary areas of her legal practice.

She has decades of experience representing labor unions in both the private and public sector, including in law enforcement, healthcare, construction trades, industrial employees, service employees, etc.

Ms. Hitchcock Cross also chairs the Firm's Business Law Center. She advises on business start-ups, contract bids, personnel, key employee contracts, vendor and customer collection disputes, and all manner of commercial litigation. She also represents community organizations and co-operatives. She handles education law matters which involve special consideration of tenure, plagiarism, teacher and administrator contracts. She also represents community schools in start-up and on-going representation.

Attorney Hitchcock Cross is a frequent speaker and writer in areas of interest in employment, business, university law, community organizations and cooperatives, social media and employment law, retaliation, and qui tam, False Claims Act, SEC, IRS, OSHA and other whistleblower litigation.
 

Public Service

Small Business Venture Fund Committee of the City of Milwaukee City Council, review and approval of grant proposal for business start-ups and expansion for job creation and retention for more than a decade.

Milwaukee Public Schools: Taught classes on job rights for students entering the workforce.