Ruairi McDonnell

Ruairi McDonnell is a Partner with Feinstein Doyle Payne & Kravec, LLC who practices in ERISA and employee benefits, labor and employment, and class action cases.

Ruairi McDonnell is a Partner practicing in Feinstein Doyle Payne & Kravec, LLC’s class action litigation group since 2014. Ruairi is admitted to practice law before the courts of Pennsylvania, the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, and the Third, Sixth, and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals.

Ruairi successfully litigated claims challenging cuts to company-provided retiree health benefits in the following cases:

Comer v. Gerdau Ameristeel US Inc., 2017 WL 5256871 (M.D. Fla. Nov. 13, 2017) (retiree healthcare action on behalf of United Steelworker retirees) (“The action required expertise in ERISA, the Labor Management Relations Act, and Rule 23, and class counsel’s performance evidences a skill rarely demonstrated by the typical class-action litigator in this district.”).

Amos v. PPG Industries, Inc., No. 2:05-cv-70 (S.D. Ohio)(co-lead counsel in retiree healthcare action recovering $7.65 million and benefits for more than 6,000 retirees from five unions.

Ruairi earned his J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 2013. He served as a Research Editor on the University’s Law Review, where he published the Note The Vice of Prudence: Judicial Abstention and the Case of Al-Aulaqi v. Obama. He recently co-authored The Constitutional Limitations of Public Employee Pension Legislation, Revisited, The Public Lawyer, Summer 2017 (with William T. Payne, Esq. and Joel R. Hurt, Esq.)

Ruairi has represented retired workers in class actions challenging the reduction or termination of their vested retiree benefits as part of FDPK’s employee benefits practices group, as well as individual ERISA plan participants in cases challenging benefit denials, consumers in class action cases arising under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and employees challenging illegal pay practices under the Fair Labor Standards Act.