A state appellate court ruling has extended the span of time that a former Reed Smith partner, who alleged the firm paid her less because of her gender and thwarted opportunities to grow her practice, can pursue back pay compensation. The appellate division ruled Thursday that Sherri Affrunti would receive a longer time window to consider comparative employee salary data in her gender-and-pay discrimination lawsuit against her former firm, Reed Smith, finding that the intent of Diane B. Allen Equal Pay Act allowed for such a window. The appellate division’s ruling amounted to a wholesale reversal of a Mercer County Superior Court finding, which had said Affrunti could only consider comparative employee salary data from peers in New Jersey beginning from the Allen Act's effective date of July 1, 2018. The appellate division disagreed, finding Affrunti's use of such salary data should both extend to all of Reed Smith's offices nationwide and back to the beginning of her partnership tenure, Jan. 1, 2006. In a matter of first impression, Appellate Division Judges Thomas W. Sumners Jr., Ronald Susswein and Mark K. Chase disagreed with the trial court using the Allen Act to strictly limit both Affrunti’s discovery material and the scope of her damages, when the judges instead found the law provided for a broad discovery window. The appellate panel labeled the trial court's initial finding as “an absurd result.” “Affrunti’s damage claims should not be limited to the effective date of the Allen Act any more than they were before the statute’s enactment. As she correctly points out, she should be allowed to pursue claims related to the payments she received on Jan. 25, 2019 and March 26, 2019—discrete acts of discrimination under the Law Against Discrimination,” Sumners wrote. Affrunti, who started at Reed Smith as an associate in 2002 and resigned from her fixed share partnership there in 2019 to start her own firm, alleged that Reed Smith discriminated against her as a female lawyer, saying she was “continuously paid substantially less than her male comparators both within and outside of the firm's Princeton office, against whom she outperformed or equally performed.” In addition to pay discrimination, Affrunti also alleged other instances of disparate treatment towards her within the firm as compared to her male counterparts, which Reed Smith categorically denied. In November 2024, Judge R. Brian McLaughlin issued a four-part omnibus order that narrowed Affrunti’s discovery of comparator employee compensation information to the Allen Act’s effective date through her departure from the firm, or from July 1, 2018, to Jan. 11, 2019, and limited her damages to that same time period. The trial court also limited her comparator compensation data only to fixed share partners in New Jersey, as opposed to nationwide and prevented her from obtaining discovery back to the date she became a fixed share partner with Reed Smith on Jan. 1, 2006. After the appellate division originally denied her appeal of the trial court ruling, the New Jersey Supreme Court granted her leave to continue, so the case returned to the appellate division. The appellate court found the trial court’s ruling “divests Affrunti of the two-year lookback period [for discrete violations] that existed under the Law Against Discrimination, before the enactment of the Allen Act.” “So long as the final ‘discrete’ act took place no more than two years prior to the filing of the complaint, a plaintiff’s complaint was timely, and they could collect back pay for up to two years prior to the filing of the complaint,” Sumners said. As a result, Affrunti could pursue back pay claims related to the final compensation she received from Reed Smith in January and March 2019. The appellate division concluded that with the filing of Affrunti’s complaint on Dec. 18, 2020, the two-year lookback period available to her to pursue back pay extends to that date, not the Allen Act's effective date of July 1, 2018. For the very same reason, the appellate division concluded that discovery of comparator employee compensation information between Dec. 18, 2018 and Dec. 18, 2020 would be permitted. Lastly, the appellate division found Affrunti is also entitled to comparator employee compensation data from Jan. 1, 2006 to Jan. 11, 2019, given the Allen Act’s “text, legislative history and relevant agency interpretations support[ing] a broad discovery of the statute’s comparator employee compensation data provision.” The suit was remanded to the Mercer County trial court with that guidance in mind. Affrunti, represented herself in the appeal, and Sean P. Joyce of Carmagnola & Ritardi in Morristown, represented Reed Smith. Neither attorney immediately responded to requests for comment.