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Court leak reveals $350k settlement offer in CC discrimination dispute

March 26th, 2010 by Legalweek Leave a reply »

Clifford Chance (CC) offered to pay a former associate $350,000 (£236,000) to settle a lawsuit in which she accused the firm of discriminating against her, firing her, and then making it difficult for her to land work at other firms, reports The Am Law Daily.

Caroline Memnon originally sued both CC and Boston-based firm Sullivan & Worcester in early 2008, a year after Sullivan fired her and nearly six years after CC asked her to resign.

Memnon’s original complaint accused CC partners and senior associates of refusing to give her high-quality billable work because she is black. In the complaint, Memnon says she asked partners and associates for deal work but got very little of it; at one point, Memnon claims, she was set to bill fewer than 400 hours in a year.

CC management claimed she was not cut out to be a lawyer and assigned her non-billable jobs such as fact-checking a partner’s book, Memnon says in her suit. When she complained, the firm asked her to resign.

After she left CC, Memnon claims the firm attempted to prevent her from finding work elsewhere by providing bad references and spreading negative information about her. She says she was denied employment by prospective employers because of this.

Memnon then sought work at smaller firms, thinking they would not have been exposed to CC’s efforts to tarnish her reputation, her complaint states. Sullivan & Worcester hired her in early February 2007 but fired her less than two months later without reason, the complaint states.

Memnon settled with the firms late last year, but has now moved to re-open the cases.

She claims in court papers now under seal that her former lawyers at US firm Doman Davis coerced her into settling against her will during a hearing in late November 2009. In the sealed papers, Memnon says she suffered an anxiety attack at the hearing, resulting from the time constraint imposed by the judge moderating the hearing to reach a settlement and the pressure from her lawyer to accept one; she says she agreed, under duress, to the $350,000 settlement without thinking it through.

A partial transcript of the November 2009 settlement talks was mistakenly posted on the federal court system’s online docket, PACER, earlier this week. CC and the firm’s lawyers at Proskauer Rose sent an urgent letter to the court hearing the matter in Manhattan on Tuesday (23 March), asking the court to remove the documents from PACER immediately. The documents have since been removed.

The transcript indicates that CC offered the $350,000 settlement. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein declared, according to the transcript, that the parties would execute general releases, and that the case would be dismissed. The firm and its lawyer, Proskauer’s Bettina Plevan, also clarified to Magistrate Judge Gorenstein that “we’re going to pay a lump sum on a 1099 [IRS form] and therefore would want a tax indemnification,” the transcript says.

A CC spokesman did not return messages seeking comment. Plevan declined to comment on the matter. Latif Doman of Doman Davis says he no longer represents Memnon and disagrees with the allegation that he coerced her into agreeing to any settlement. He declined to comment further.

Additional reporting by Nate Raymond.

The Am Law Daily is the website of The American Lawyer, Legal Week’s US sister title.

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