Mary “Molly” Hurley Kellett

Molly Kellett is an experienced litigator focusing on complex commercial cases and employment law. She approaches each matter with an eye toward maximizing efficiency, providing expedient solutions that protect clients from exposure and help them achieve their business goals. Clients value Molly’s experience, including her technical strengths in discovery and investigations, as well as her calm, decisive approach to all disputes. Molly’s ability to distil complex issues into clear, actionable advice helps her clients navigate and manage these disputes with confidence.

A significant portion of Molly’s practice is devoted to defending public and private employers in litigation venued in federal and state courts. She handles the full spectrum of employment disputes, including discrimination claims brought on the basis of gender, age, disability, or national origin; alleged equal pay and wage and hour violations; and retaliation and wrongful termination claims. Molly also conducts confidential internal investigations and negotiates and enforces employment contracts for both employers and executives.

Molly also maintains a strong commercial litigation practice in which she litigates cases across the nation. She has particular expertise in contractual disputes, shareholder and partnership conflicts, breaches of fiduciary duty, business torts, and injunction proceedings. Managing these complex commercial matters involves substantial documentary evidence, multiple parties, expert witnesses, and also requires regular appearances in mediations and other alternative dispute resolution forums. Molly takes a pragmatic, commercially focused approach, working closely with clients to develop strategies aligned with their broader business objectives, whether that involves early resolution or robust pursuit of proceedings through to trial.

Molly has extensive experience managing eDiscovery issues and employs cutting-edge technology for information and data retention, preservation, collection, review and production. She guides clients through these processes before and during litigation and handles eDiscovery negotiations, conferences and disputes.

Molly is part of the next generation of leaders at Connell Foley LLP, where she is a member of the Hiring Committee and serves as a mentor to up-and-coming associates. Beyond the practice of law, Molly is civic-minded and an active member of her community. During law school, she clerked in the Seton Hall Law Civil Litigation Clinic and interned for Essex Newark Legal Services. Today, she chairs the Township of Cranford Planning Board and serves in various roles for the parent organizations at each of her children’s schools. Molly also supports the local social outreach efforts of the St. Joseph Social Service Center in Elizabeth, as well as charitable organizations that focus on finding a cure for all blood cancers, including Blood Cancer United and the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. In her free time, Molly enjoys traveling with her husband and three children and they never miss the annual July 4^th Canoe Races at the historic Cranford Canoe Club.

Results may vary depending on your particular facts and legal circumstances.

• Secured order limiting the proposed class collective to employees of only one defendant, eliminating liability for three co-defendants, and modifying the proposed class notice as defendants requested further reflect the limitations on the claims and putative class, rejecting the broad class and set of claims proposed.
• Secured leave of court to amend a civil complaint to assert claims (1) double piercing the defendant LLC’s corporate veil and (2) asserting fraud arising from intentional misrepresentations as to the financial structure and ability to pay the plaintiff contractor finding that we presented sufficient facts to support these claims and defeat a motion to dismiss.
• Obtained order and affirmation at the appellate division upholding an earlier court order limiting permitted activity on a residential property and enforcing a deed restriction, as well as a fee award for our clients based on the non-compliant party’s flagrant, continuous violation of the previous court order.
• Obtained dismissal of national hotel chain holding company based on based on lack of jurisdiction and plaintiff’s failure to establish the required minimum contacts in New Jersey to justify the exercise of long-arm jurisdiction.
• Secured an order compelling production of documents and information related to the defendants’ financial condition, because the court agreed such information was relevant to the defendant’s ability to pay the disputed contract amounts owed and the actual motive for non-payment of our contractor client, rather than the pretext of failure to perform asserted as a defense.
• Obtained dismissal of administrative challenge to municipal action based on non-taxpayer's lack of standing.
• Conducted internal investigation of claims of alleged discriminatory conduct and inappropriate workplace behavior by management of a private organization, issuing a report and recommendation on appropriate employment actions for the organization.
• Negotiated confidential settlement of alleged claims against a high-profile organization under public scrutiny, to avoid litigation and handled subsequent allegations of breach(es) of the agreement by both parties.
• Successfully negotiated exits for high-profile executives subject to employment restraints that released them from such restraints and secured payouts of all unpaid commissions, and bonus amounts owed to them, plus limited future restraints on employment and client communications/contact.

Professional and Community Affiliations

• Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel (FDCC)
• New Jersey State Bar Association
• Chair, Township of Cranford Planning Board
• American Bar Association
• Kappa Kappa Gamma

Best Lawyers in America (2022-2026)

• Employment Law - Management
• Litigation - Construction

Forty under 40, NJBIZ (2021

"New Leaders of the Bar," New Jersey Law Journal (2020)

New Jersey Super Lawyers - Rising Stars (2016-2021)

_{Please see Honor and Award Methodology. No aspect of this advertisement has been approved by the Supreme Court of New Jersey.}