Astbury Law represents Troy and Oakland County employees in wrongful termination, discrimination, retaliation, and non-compete defense matters. My practice has a heavy Oakland County footprint — a reflection of the professional and corporate workforce that anchors Troy, Bloomfield Hills, Southfield, Auburn Hills, and the surrounding communities.

I’m Warren Astbury. I’m a Harvard Law graduate (2009) with 15 years of experience and 50+ trials to verdict. I represent Michigan employees — only employees, never employers.

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The Oakland County employment law landscape

Troy and the surrounding Oakland County corridor have one of Michigan’s highest concentrations of professional and corporate employees. That workforce shapes the employment-case mix in specific ways.

Financial services and professional services. Troy hosts regional offices for national financial services firms (UBS, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity), accounting firms (Deloitte, PwC, Plante Moran), consulting firms, and the large Big Three supplier finance organizations. Professional employees generate a disproportionate share of non-compete defense cases (moving between firms), age discrimination cases (pushed out in restructurings), and race/gender discrimination cases at the senior-professional level.

Healthcare headquarters and executive suites. Corewell Health East maintains executive offices in Oakland County. Beaumont (now Corewell East), Henry Ford, and Ascension all have significant Oakland County footprints. Healthcare executives and clinical leadership face distinct patterns — executive severance disputes, restrictive covenants, OWBPA-covered age issues in senior-level RIFs.

Automotive and mobility headquarters. Troy and neighboring Auburn Hills/Rochester Hills host headquarters for major Big Three suppliers, OEM engineering operations, and Stellantis’s North American HQ. Engineers, product managers, and sales professionals at these employers generate a steady flow of non-compete defense matters when moving between firms or into the newer mobility and technology sectors.

Physicians, attorneys, and other licensed professionals. Oakland County has one of the state’s highest concentrations of physicians and attorneys. Physician employment agreements almost always contain restrictive covenants (non-solicits on patients, non-competes with distance or time limits), and enforcement disputes when physicians change practices are one of the more common patterns I see.

The target industries I’ve named — physicians, engineers, accountants, sales professionals — concentrate in Oakland County. If you fit that demographic, your profile maps well to the kinds of cases I build.

Federal and state court jurisdiction

Federal: Oakland County falls within the Eastern District of Michigan (EDMI), with courthouses in Detroit and Flint. Federal claims (Title VII, ADA, ADEA, FMLA, Section 1981) are filed in EDMI.

State: ELCRA, PDCRA, and WPA claims can be filed in the Oakland County Circuit Court (6th Judicial Circuit), headquartered in Pontiac.

Common Troy and Oakland County fact patterns

Non-compete defense for physicians moving between practices — a specialty within a specialty, where the restrictive covenant analysis turns on Michigan’s specific treatment of healthcare non-competes
Executive severance and OWBPA waivers — senior-level employees offered severance agreements that often require careful review before signing
Engineer and technical-professional non-compete disputes — former employers (often automotive or automotive-adjacent) asserting broad restrictive covenants when engineers move to new opportunities
Age discrimination in professional services RIFs — senior associates, principals, and partners pushed out in restructurings, often with selection patterns that skew heavily older
Race and gender discrimination at the senior-professional level — pay disparities, promotion denials, and pretextual terminations, often with strong comparator evidence
Pregnancy discrimination in professional services — partnership-track attorneys, accountants, and consultants experiencing shifts in treatment after pregnancy announcement or maternity leave

Practice areas I handle in Troy and Oakland County

Scheduling and in-person meetings

My office is in downtown Detroit, a 30-minute drive from most of Oakland County. Initial consultations can be done by phone or video call; in-person meetings can be scheduled at my Detroit office, and for time-sensitive matters I’ll meet in Troy or the surrounding area.

Astbury Law, PLLC 607 Shelby Street, 7th Floor, #1115 Detroit, MI 48226 814-821-1140 · warren@astburylaw.com

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Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. The information on this page is for general educational purposes and is not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this page or submitting a form.