Education
University of Michigan Law School. University of Michigan. Ross School of Business.
University of Michigan Law School. University of Michigan. Ross School of Business.
Sprenger is best-known as lead counsel of Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Company, a discrimination case involving female iron miners in Minnesota. Early Life and Earning a track scholarship to the University of Michigan, Sprenger was the first of his family to attend college.
Sprenger received a Bachelor of Arts from the University"s School of Business Administration in 1962, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1965.
From 1965 until 1977, Sprenger practiced law with the Minneapolis business/defense law firm of Johnson & Sands, becoming a partner in 1970. Finding himself unsatisfied with representing business clients, Sprenger began his own firm in 1977, with a primary focus on employment discrimination class actions.
In 1989, Sprenger merged his firm with Jane Language"s firm based in Washington, District of Columbia to form Sprenger + Language, Professional Limited Liability Company. In Minneapolis in August 1988, Sprenger filed Lois East. Jenson and Patricia South. Kosmach v. Eveleth Taconite Company in United States. District Court The case, known as Jenson v.
Eveleth Taconite Company, became the first sexual harassment discrimination class action lawsuit in the United States. A fictionalized account of the landmark case was made into a 2005 film, North Country, with Woody Harrelson portraying the lead attorney "Bill White," acting in the Paul Sprenger role.
Sprenger was lead counsel on a television writers" age discrimination lawsuit which began in 2000 and settled in 2010. The case involved claims of widespread age discrimination in the television production and talent agency industries. These claims have been pursued for years with help from other firms and organizations, such as American Association of Retired Persons. The case was settled in 2010 for $74.5 Million - the largest ever settlement in the history of age discrimination litigation.
Sprenger was the treasurer of the Tregaron Conservancy, an environmental non-profit organization that restores and maintains the Tregaron historic estate in Washington, District of Columbia Sprenger served on the Board of Directors of the Atlas Performing Arts Center and served as the Treasurer of the organization.
Sprenger was a Trustee of the Sprenger Language Foundation, a non-profit organization promoting arts and arts education. On December 29, 2014, Spenger died of an apparent heart attack while snorkeling in Curaçao.