Bill Payne—one of the founding partners of FDPK—retired in June 2024, after more than 45 years of practicing law.

Throughout his career, Bill served as counsel for retirees or employees in more than one hundred class action lawsuits throughout the United States. Many of his lawsuits challenged cuts in company-provided retiree health care benefits. In 2006, for example, Bill represented nearly 600,000 former auto worker retirees against General Motors and the Ford Motor Company. The cases ended in settlements worth billions of dollars. During the lawsuits, the courts noted Bill’s vast experience in handling class actions, as well as his knowledge of the body of law surrounding retirement benefits.

Bill grew up in California, but moved to Pittsburgh in his teens and graduated from Allderdice High School in Squirrel Hill. He received his law degree from Berkeley Law at the University of California, after having graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh. He then practiced labor law (first in Washington, D.C., later in San Francisco). In 1982, he became an Assistant General Counsel of the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, where he later assumed primary responsibility for the Union’s employee benefits litigation throughout the United States.

After nearly a decade with the Steelworkers, Bill returned to California, serving as partner and later Of Counsel to a Los Angeles-based labor law firm. In 2007, Bill and others (including Ellen Doyle and Ed Feinstein) founded FDPK, and he considers himself fortunate to have worked with skilled and dedicated attorneys who joined the firm over the years, and who made it so successful in solving problems for hardworking people.

Bill remains active in retirement. He trained in an IRS program in order to volunteer as a Tax-Aide for AARP. Now, during tax season, he helps elderly and low-income persons file their taxes. He also fund-raises for the Rett Syndrome Research Trust (RSRT), a highly-rated international foundation seeking a cure for the devastating genetic disease afflicting his stepson’s daughter, as well as one in 10,000 other girls and women born each year. The work of RSRT has resulted in the first human clinical trials ever, in Canada and the US, attempting to cure Rett Syndrome. Bill also supports the Peggy Browning Fund, which finances young lawyers fighting for workplace justice.

Somehow, Bill also finds time to bicycle, golf and hike in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania and California. He and his wife, Ann, split their time between family in Pittsburgh and Santa Monica. They criss-cross the country twice a year, driving two cars in order to accommodate their two dogs.