Reverend David J Ackerman, Conference Minister, Penn West Conference of the UCC, is a graduate of Grove City College and Harvard Divinity School. He was ordained in 1993. He served as a pastor at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ in Trauger for 21 years, and began serving as Conference Minister on August 1, 2014.

 Dean Rocco is a pragmatic, results-oriented attorney who leverages the firm’s geographic reach and strength across multiple disciplines to the benefit of clients.  Dean takes great pride in building longstanding partnerships with clients through responsive communication and consistent, positive results in keeping with clients’ business philosophies or litigation objectives. As a distinguished attorney and recognized authority in his field, Dean is routinely asked share to share his perspectives on evolving legal issues.  

Dean is a Chair of the firm’s national Employment & Labor Practice Group.  In that capacity, Dean maintains a significant practice representing employers and management in a wide range of employment litigation.  Dean also lends his knowledge and perspective to negotiating executive compensation arrangements, building effective personnel policies, managing risk during difficult disciplinary issues, guiding employers through complex disability and leave situations and delivering online and in-person training programs for employees.  

Dean also serves as a Chair of the firm’s national Cannabis Law Practice Group.  Dean helps clients inside and outside the cannabis industry navigate the complex and quickly evolving framework of laws around industrial hemp and commercial cannabis.  For clients within the industry, Dean supports clients in a full range of corporate legal services, including regulatory, transactional, commercial, intellectual property, employment and litigation matters.  Dean also works with insurance carriers to build insurance programs covering the industry and responding to claims against their insureds.   

EMPLOYMENT Counseling, Training & Litigation

Clients routinely seek Dean’s help negotiating executive compensation arrangements, navigating difficult personnel issues, managing employees with disabilities and medical leave rights, complying with wage and hour regulations and developing sound personnel policies. Clients also call on Dean to train management and employees on a variety of subjects, such as discrimination and harassment prevention, managing employees within the law, and complying with wage and hour laws.  Dean develops online programs for clients to efficiently satisfy state-mandated training requirements.

Dean also maintains a significant employment litigation practice covering a broad range of cases, including breach of employment contract, discrimination and harassment, violations of disability and medical leave laws, and workplace torts such as defamation and wrongful termination in violation of public policy. In addition, Dean frequently litigates individual, representative and class action wage-and-hour lawsuits alleging claims such as denials of meal periods and rest breaks, misclassification of employees, non-payment of wages, off-the-clock work, unlawful commission and bonus plans, and violations of statutory pay provisions.

Dean has successfully enforced employer-promulgated arbitration programs, secured restraining orders against employees involved in workplace violence, and prosecuted actions against employees engaged in unfair competition and misappropriation of trade secrets.