Joel L. Goldenberg
Founding Partner. Employment litigation for employees and employers, and commercial and real estate litigation, in the New York State courts and the United States District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, and Northern Districts of New York. Fluent in Russian.
Joel L. Goldenberg is an employment litigator. He represents employees, executives, employers, and business owners in wage-and-hour and overtime claims; misclassification, discrimination, harassment, and retaliation claims; severance and compensation disputes; and restrictive covenants, individually and in class and collective actions. He has handled hundreds of employment matters in the New York State courts and the United States District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, and Northern Districts of New York.
He brings the same approach to commercial and real estate litigation: contract and collection actions, fraud and business-tort claims, and contract-of-sale disputes that call for emergency relief. His results range from a six-figure overtime recovery and confidential executive settlements to a $962,450 partial summary judgment and a preliminary injunction reported in Crain’s New York Business. Representative matters appear under Experience below.
Before forming Goldenberg LLP, Joel practiced as Joel L. Goldenberg PLLC and served as Senior Litigation Counsel at Joseph & Norinsberg LLC, after beginning his career at Virginia & Ambinder LLP. He was selected to the New York Metro Super Lawyers Rising Stars list each year from 2022 through 2026.
A native New Yorker and a native Russian speaker, Joel prepares every case to be tried, and his clients hear from him directly at every stage.
Experience
Employment: wages, overtime, and discrimination
Employees and employers in wage-and-hour, overtime, misclassification, commission, discrimination, harassment, and retaliation claims, individually and in class and collective actions, in the New York State and federal courts.
Overtime, wage, commission, and discrimination settlements for employees
- Six-figure overtime settlement for a dollar-store employee
- Overtime settlement in a federal action for a building handyman
- Confidential religious-discrimination and wrongful-termination settlement for a C-suite technology executive
- Confidential hostile-work-environment settlement for a not-for-profit organization employee
- Overtime settlement for a pizza-delivery employee
- Overtime settlement for a corporate cleaning-services employee
- Overtime settlement for a home health care worker
- Unpaid sales-commissions settlement for a fire-and-alarm-systems employee
Commercial contracts and collections
Breach-of-contract and account-stated claims for businesses owed money under services agreements and invoices, pressed to judgment and enforcement.
$962,450 partial summary judgment on unpaid technology-services invoices
Counsel to a technology-consulting firm. Obtained partial summary judgment of $962,450 in principal on breach-of-contract and account-stated claims for unpaid invoices under a master services agreement, with the court rejecting the customer’s waiver and modification defenses.
Defense of commercial claims
Defense of companies and individuals against fraud, veil-piercing, and voidable-transfer claims, with the aim of ending them at the pleading stage.
Dismissal of fraud, veil-piercing, and voidable-transfer claims in a legal-fee action
Counsel to defendants in an action by a law firm to recover legal fees. Obtained dismissal of the fraud, veil-piercing, and voidable-transfer claims.
Real estate contracts and injunctions
Purchasers, sellers, and owners in contract-of-sale disputes, including emergency injunctions that stop a property from being conveyed while a claim proceeds.
Preliminary injunction preserving a purchaser’s contract for a Garment District development site
Counsel to the contract purchaser of 349–355 West 37th Street, a Garment District development site. Obtained a preliminary injunction barring the seller from conveying the property to a second buyer while the purchaser’s claim proceeds, and defeated the seller’s motion to compel termination of the purchaser’s memorandum of contract. Reported in Crain’s New York Business.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. The matters above were handled at prior firms. Settlements are described with the clients’ identities and confidential terms withheld; other descriptions are drawn from the public record.
Speak with Joel. We offer a courtesy initial consultation, free for employees. Consultations can be conducted in Russian.