Results that Speak for Themselves

A woman subjected to ongoing harassment and sexual assault by a fellow employee was awarded a verdict of $95 million against her employer. During her tenure at the company, she suffered a humiliating and degrading sexual harassment campaign from male employees, led by the store manager. She had reported the assault to other managers at the store and called the company’s sexual harassment hotline to request help, but her complaints were never investigated, opening the company up to liability. The jury awarded $15 million compensatory and $80 million punitive damages.

On June 29, 2015 a Manhattan federal jury awarded a young woman $18,000,000 against a Wall Street CEO after a 2-week trial. Her case included proof of inappropriate sexual conduct by her boss throughout her employment as well as defamation, retaliation and stalking for more than a year after she was fired for refusing to give in to his advances. Defendants denied all allegations, contended that defamation of the Plaintiff fell within the company CEO’s First Amendment rights, and attempted to frame the lawsuit as extortion. The jury found for the plaintiff on her sexual harassment, retaliation and defamation counts and awarded the Plaintiff $2,000,000.00 in compensatory damages for her emotional upset and damage to her reputation as well as $16,000,000.00 in punitive damages. The verdict was the seventh largest intentional tort verdict in New York State in the 21st Century.

Plaintiff Rachel Bulette filed a class action suit against Defendants Western Dental Services Inc. and RevSpring, Inc., and asserted Defendants’ violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227 Plaintiff contended Western Dental Services, Inc. and RevSpring, Inc. violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, based on unsolicited text messages sent to customers without their consent orpermission. Plaintiff contended Defendants sent the unpermitted text communications even after RevSpring received atext message that contained the word “stop” from the customers who responded to the Western Dental text messages. Defendants denied Plaintiff’s contentions. The parties agreed to settle for the amount of $9,700,000.

In what was one of the first #me too movement cases a $9 million settlement was obtained for a producer for a famous television personality. The personality repeatedly called the client making lewd and graphic sexual comments causing her stress and anxiety.

A female employee was raped by her Managing Director, but he claimed the sex was consensual. Plaintiff brought the case after the statute of limitations had run, however our lawyers managed to obtain a $4.725 million settlement to compensate for the retaliation suffered by Plaintiff as a result of reporting the assault. The case had been filed after the statute of limitations expired.

The CEO of a large company coerced a female subordinate executive to have sexual relations with him. The statute of limitations had already run, however our lawyers still managed to obtain a $3.75 million settlement, arguing that any sexual relations between a CEO and subordinate is sexual harassment, regardless of whether it was forced or consensual, due to the power imbalance between parties, and also arguing that our client’s career stalled once she ended the sexual relations.

A professional woman working as a senior bank director sued her employer after discovering that she earned less money than less experienced men holding the same position as her. Our lawyers settled the gender bias/age discrimination case for $3.75 million.

A woman who suffered ongoing sexual harassment from her CEO was awarded $2.8 million in compensation after suffering emotional distress and some economic loss. The woman was hired by Defendant, a retail company, and brought years of retail industry experience to the role. After excelling at her job and being promised a second promotion, she was coerced into having sexual relations by the Defendant’s CEO, who thereafter repeatedly made sexual advances toward her during business trips. In retaliation to her constant rebuttal of his sexual advances, the woman was denied her promotion, given diminished performance ratings despite consistently exceeding target sales, refused stock options and raises, and given extra work for the same remuneration.

A restaurant that employed young women, whose revealing outfits and sex appeal were played up for the benefit of its patrons, was sued by four of its employees for sexual harassment. The four plaintiffs, all young women, were each sexually assaulted under different circumstances by the restaurant’s general manager. One girl was forced to perform fellatio after being lured downstairs under work pretenses, one was drugged and raped after a work event, and another was violently sexually assaulted at work. Our lawyers obtained a $2.3 million settlement for the plaintiffs.

Four men who worked for a large bank became the victims of a workplace bullying campaign against them. The men, who were all of East Asian descent, became the targets of colleagues after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, since one of the men was of the Muslim faith. The co-workers started bullying the plaintiffs, calling them racist names such as “terrorists”. The bank agreed to pay $1.8 million in damages.

The client, a man in his early 50s, working on Wall Street. His employer started trying to squeeze him out, saying that they were “downsizing”, when in reality they were trying to replace him with a younger worker whose junior wage would cost them less. Plaintiff launched an age discrimination lawsuit against his employer. Defendant was paid $1.5 million in damages.

Plaintiff, a woman who worked from home, sued the CEO of her employer for sexual harassment. The CEO had come to Arkansas to inspect his factory there and requested that Plaintiff pick him up from the airport and take him to his hotel, where Defendant then raped Plaintiff. Defendant also set up a Skype account for Plaintiff, and would Skype call her only to reveal that he was masturbating. Plaintiff’s case settled for $1.425 million in damages for the ongoing sexual harassment.

Plaintiff, a professional man working as in-house counsel at a company, sued after being fired for complaining internally about SOX violations. Plaintiff reported to the company the illegality of such violations, namely that the company was misrepresenting the value of their stock to the public, and that the company had huge debts that they were not revealing to anyone. Plaintiff also reported that a planned layoff illegally targeted older employee. Plaintiff was awarded $1.355 million to compensate for being retaliated against as a whistleblower.

A female employee at a correctional facility sued for sexual harassment. Plaintiff claimed her work environment was sexually hostile towards females, with her male co-workers constantly making sexual jokes. On one occasion, two armed male co-workers took Plaintiff into a room and pretended that they were going to sexually assault her as a “practical joke”, unzipping their pants, and holding her arms down. Plaintiff settled for $1.2 million in damages.

A woman working in the fashion industry sued for discrimination based on her pregnancy. Plaintiff recorded a conversation with her boss, who threatened: “If you’re pregnant during fashion week, I’ll fire you.” Plaintiff was subsequently fired when her employer learned she was pregnant. Our lawyers obtained $800,000 in damages for her discrimination suit.

A woman working as a stylist was aggressively “flashed” by a male celebrity while she was working on his photoshoot. Plaintiff sued for workplace sexual harassment and settled for $700,000 in damages.

The undersigned agrees with the reasoning of Gardiner, which supports the conclusion that Plaintiffs are entitled to the benefit of California’s laws governing Doe pleading. Those laws do not require that Plaintiffs allege specific facts indicating the relationship of the Doe defendants to their FEHA claims. Therefore, the Court denies Defendants’ Motion as to the Doe defendants named on the FEHA claims.