Thomas F. Martin

Georgia attorney, Thomas F. Martin, grew up in Queens, New York playing basketball at LaSalle Academy against the likes of Lew Alcindor (“Kareem Abdul-Jabbar”), prior to being highly recruited to play basketball for the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. Upon graduation from the Naval Academy, Tom served in Vietnam for a year on river patrol boats (PBRs) on the rivers and canals of the Mekong Delta. After active duty, Tom obtained his MBA and began a very successful health care career as a senior executive of several hospital corporations that lasted for 28 years and provided him with a wealth of experience in a wide variety of management and senior administrative and executive roles.

Tom has operated in both the proprietary as well as the not-for-profit segments of the health care industry. Known as “the fixer,” Tom was the one chosen by national hospital corporations for takeovers and turnarounds requiring him to step into very poorly performing hospitals and make them profitable in a short period of time. At one time or another, Tom was the CEO of three of the ten largest psychiatric hospitals in the country. For several years he was a Regional Vice President for Hospital Corporation of America, the largest owner of hospitals in the country at the time, with the exception of possibly the VA, and he had direct operational responsibility for eight private psychiatric hospitals. He also served for several years as the COO of a five hundred bed medical surgical hospital and was personally responsible for implementing an open-heart surgery and an autologous bone marrow transplant program. Additionally, Tom also has experience in many corporate start-ups and performing due diligence evaluations.

After retiring from his corporate career, Tom attended and graduated from Case Western Law School and now uses his executive management experience to represent employees, including physicians, and a select group of small businesses in a myriad of employment matters.

A founding part of Martin & Martin’s gameplan, Tom is proud of not running a "litigation mill" handling hundreds of cases hoping to win a few. Instead, Tom handles a limited number of cases with the hopes of winning them all. This strategy allows him to give each of his cases highly specialized and individual attention as he fights in the best interests of his clients. Tom handles matters involving unpaid wage and overtime cases including class/collective actions on behalf of groups of employees; discrimination claims based upon disability (ADA), age (ADEA), gender and religion (Title VII); as well as sexual harassment, retaliation, and wrongful termination claims. He also represents employees in Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) cases. Tom handles matters on behalf of employees at the Department of Labor (DOL), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), mediation, arbitration, and litigation as well as negotiates severance and settlement agreements.

Tom has filed lawsuits against national and international companies like Home Depot, FedEx Ground, Ethan Allen, Chili’s Bar & Grill, and Diligent Delivery Services as well as numerous Georgia companies including Emory University. He is a successful litigator and trial attorney who co-counseled with his partner, Kimberly Martin, in obtaining the second highest sexual harassment jury verdict of the year in Georgia for a sexual harassment and retaliation case. He unapologetically aggressively fights for his clients resulting in hundreds of successful resolutions.

Tom’s decades long executive management background is incomparable and he used his unique expertise to found the firm’s small business laws practice to represent a select number of small businesses with the goal of providing them with not just sound legal advice and counsel, but a real-world gameplan to protect his small business clients from financial devastation that can occur when an alleged employment related legal violation is claimed. As a seasoned attorney and former executive, Tom represents his small business clients in transactional and litigation matters and acts as their “in-house” counsel for day-to-day employment issues. Based on Tom’s prior decades of executive management expertise, he handles all types of employment law matters, including contract drafting, review and negotiation; compliance with state and federal laws; representation at the EEOC and DOL levels; and employment litigation defense at arbitration, mediation, and state and federal courts. He performs FLSA job audits; sexual harassment investigations; and reasonable accommodation determinations under the ADA. Tom also drafts, reviews, and negotiates severance and settlement agreements on behalf of his small business clients.

Tom understands that small businesses are built on the sacrifices of their owners and hard-working employees and they should not be excluded from outstanding legal advice and counsel due to their inability or lack of desire to pay extraordinary hourly rates to attorneys. Instead, Tom is proud to provide his small business clients with concrete solid legal advice and strategies at reasonable hourly rates and monthly retainer fees that allow his clients to call his cell phone whenever a potential legal issue arises or when his clients want to “talk through” an employment or business decision. In hiring Tom, small businesses not only receive seasoned “in-house” counsel services, but they receive advice and representation based on 28 years of senior corporate executive experience. Tom is focused on the best interests of his small business clients and this includes not running up enormous legal fees when another more viable and appropriate option exists. Tom takes care of the legal aspects of his corporate clients so they can focus on running their businesses. And, small businesses in Georgia will likely not find another attorney with Tom’s impressive background.