Bob DeRose

In 2005, Bob DeRose took on an overtime case involving 10,000 current and former Lowe’s employees in Ohio and Pennsylvania. He secured a settlement for the workers. The case helped set the course for the next two decades of his career, pursuing wages that employees had earned but had not been paid.

By then, Bob had already spent more than a decade representing injured workers in Ohio. His involvement in workers’ rights began in law school at the University of Dayton, before he graduated in 1991. In Columbus, he built his early practice helping people pursue workers’ compensation after injuries on the job. The Lowe’s case brought him into the wage-and-hour work that would become his focus, representing employees in Ohio and across the country.

Over his career, Bob and his colleagues have recovered more than $100 million in wages for employees. He has taken cases to jury verdict and argued twice before the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Bob has helped other lawyers do this work, too. He contributes to the American Bar Association’s treatise The Fair Labor Standards Act and co-authored a practice guide to Ohio workers’ compensation law, the field where he began. He has returned to the University of Dayton as a guest lecturer to share his experiences to the next generation of lawyers.

Bob has also advocated for working families outside the courtroom. He served on the national board of Interfaith Worker Justice, which helped workers organize against wage theft and unfair working conditions. He also served on the board of the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation, which funds civil legal aid so that Ohioans with low incomes can get legal help they could not otherwise afford.