Hope L. Calati

Hope Calati is a founding partner of Watkins, Pawlick, Calati & Prifti, previously working along-side the same team at Sachs Waldman. Hope began her practice representing unions, workers and retirees in federal class action litigation involving health care, pension and other benefit claims arising from employer benefit denials in plant shutdown and other situations.

She has advised benefit plan clients in a variety of capacities including plan design, statutory compliance, contract review, and voluntary fiduciary compliance program matters. She was primarily responsible for assisting firm clients with implementation of the HIPAA administrative simplification, privacy and security regulations and compliance with Medicare Part D regulations. She enforces participant obligations regarding the repayment of wrongfully obtained benefits and subrogation.

Hope received her undergraduate degree in English from the University of Michigan in 1994. She received her Juris Doctor cum laude from Wayne State University Law School in 1998, where she served as an editor of the Wayne Law Review, and won the inaugural Bernard Gottfried Memorial Scholarship for the study of labor law and the Boaz Siegel Award for writing.

Hope’s practice is entirely employee benefits law, particularly Taft-Hartley pension, profit sharing, annuity, health care, vacation and holiday, apprenticeship and supplemental unemployment benefit funds. Hope specializes in multiemployer contribution collections.

She is a member of the State Bar of Michigan and is admitted to practice before the United States District Courts for the Eastern and Western Districts of Michigan and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.