The Ashmore Firm PLLC

11/19/2025

As civil rights lawyers, it was our privilege yesterday to ask New York state's highest court to hold unlawful the firing of our client, a Jewish Temple's Hebrew School language teacher, fired because she wrote, on her own time, outside of work, pre-hire, on her personal blog, a 2021 post criticizing the Israeli occupation and treatment of Palestinians. New York's high court takes few discretionary appeals annually; our client's appeal was the 28th and final case in last year's term with leave to appeal granted!

New York's 201-d Labor Law protects what employees think and do in their "recreational time" and the key issue is whether the statute protects only the recreational activity (of blogging), or the viewpoint expressed in the recreational activity. It has to, because in the words of Marshall McLuhan, the message cannot be separated from the medium!

This is an extremely important and case that implicates the right to advocate for and in New York.

02/08/2024

Congratulations to our client Trevor Murray and his win today at the United States Supreme Court in Murray v. UBS!

This unanimous SCOTUS opinion is incredibly important to -- reaffirming the special and lower burdens of proof Congress intended for whistleblowers in and many other whistleblower statutes -- and it validates the work we did in 2017 in obtaining a seven-figure jury verdict for Mr. Murray, after he was unlawfully terminated by UBS bank, and subsequently on appeal in the Second Circuit.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday found that whistleblowers don't need to show retaliatory intent on the part of their employers in order to be protected under federal law, in a unanimous ruling in favor of a former UBS employee and whistleblower who fought to restore a $900,000 jury verdict he sec...

05/03/2023

The press has it right about our client's case pending at SCOTUS:

"The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to hear the case of a former UBS employee who claims he was fired for alerting his boss to potential illegal activity could reverberate beyond the financial industry to determine the future success of whistleblower retaliation claims pressed by employees in the transportation, nuclear energy and food safety sectors.

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal brought by former UBS employee Trevor Murray, who says he was fired after telling higher-ups about being pressured to alter research he conducted on UBS' commercial mortgage-backed securities business.

A Manhattan federal jury who heard the case in 2017 awarded Murray $903,300 but the Second Circuit overturned that verdict in August, saying that the judge failed to instruct the jury that they needed to find that UBS acted with "retaliatory intent" in firing the analyst."

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to hear the case of a former UBS employee who claims he was fired for alerting his boss to potential illegal activity could reverberate beyond the financial industry to determine the future success of whistleblower retaliation claims pressed by employees in the tran...

05/01/2023

Breaking News: the US Supreme Court grants review of our client, Trevor Murray's, Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower case -- Murray v. UBS -- where the 2nd Circuit threw out the million-dollar verdict we obtained for him in 2017, creating a split on the burdens of proof required under SOX!

US Supreme Court

The Relist Watch column examines cert petitions that the Supreme Court has “relisted” for its upcoming conference. A short explanation of relists is available here. Before we discuss changes to the Supreme Court’s docket this week, a word about last week’s post. As anticipated, the court dec...

02/17/2023

Special thanks to Public Citizen, the Government Accountability Project, and both Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Chuck Grassley for filing Amicus briefs today at the US Supreme Court on behalf of our Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower client Trevor Murray who was illegally fired by UBS Bank in 2012, and for whom we obtained a seven-figure jury verdict in 2017. Trevor's long journey to obtain justice shows the uphill battle whistleblowers face after sacrificing their careers in the interest of the public, to shine the deterrent light on, and stop corporate wrongdoing.

The briefs can be downloaded here:

02/16/2023

Thanks to CBS for highlighting this morning this important story https://www.cbsnews.com/news/military-veterans-dont-ask-dont-tell-honorable-discharges/ that hits close to home for Ken Pinkela -- a Bronze Star medal awarded, combat wounded Army veteran we have been privileged to represent in his fight to obtain the honorable discharge which he should have been granted after 26 years of exemplary service to our Nation.

Please add your name to the nearly 76,000 people who have signed this Change.org petition asking the Army to grant LTC Pinkela the relief he deserves: https://www.change.org/p/secretary-of-the-army-christine-wormuth-review-an-innocent-soldier-s-wrongful-conviction

Review an innocent soldier’s wrongful conviction

02/16/2023

We are a plaintiff's-side civil/human rights trial and appellate law firm with offices in New York, New Jersey and Florida.

We zealously represent people persecuted by powerful interests including, but not limited to: whistleblowers; victims of police misconduct and abuse; s*x crime victims, including in Title IX matters; international torture and war crimes victims; individuals discriminated on the basis of their race, religion, gender, age and s*xual orientation; veterans; and, injured individuals.

Call or email us for a free case evaluation.