John Scheich, verbally raped by a junior associate. Poetic justice.

Did you reformat the letter to have the S&C address line "cascade," or was it like that originally?

"Cascading" in the original. I just reformatted to move the cc's up the page and the dateline down the page.

Charney's apparently decided to fight this one out in the "court of public opinion."

I was sympathetic at the beginning, but he's starting to sound like just another shrill activist who's taken a lesson from the Duke lacrosse case. Whenever there's an identity politics angle, just lob an accusation and the target's reputation can be ruined. I wouldn't touch Charney with a barge pole after this.

Since Charney is so concerned about "motivations," let's very quickly review why he is finding lots of people and groups siding with S&C -- not exactly a likely recipient of sympathy.

First, as anyone who knows anything about discrim law can see in 2 seconds, his national origin claim should be dismissed on the pleadings and possibly subject him to sanctions, because it is just that frivolous. Bad start to a case, and not likely to garner a judge's respect.

Second, poor Aaron was so worked up about the colossal injustices he's suffered that he neglected to consider the propriety of naming individuals in his complaint who are not accused of any wrongdoing and included disparaging information about them (yes, we're talking libel here). He easily could have referred to these people as "Associate A, B, etc." but he did not. And then he published the complaint (yes, libel again) by, not merely filing it in court, but sending it to various news outlets, posting it all over the internet, and so on. Seeking redress for harms suffered, real or perceived, is one thing -- hurting the reputations of people you are not suing is something else entirely.

Third, the gratuitous attachment of the S&C partnership agreement and that email regarding a client grumbling about fees. These documents have nothing to do with his claims and certainly did not need to be incorporated into the complaint; one does not need to provide evidence in support of a complaint at the filing stage, as even Charney must know. Including these documents was intended to embarrass S&C and the defendants. Not exactly the best idea to demonstrate to a judge (and to the public whose opinion he's so valiantly fighting for) that your legal claims are carefully reasoned and merit serious consideration.

Fourth, Charney's admitted that he at one point sought counsel to represent him, and they all thought his claims had merit, but according to Charney they were unwilling to pursue the public approach he's taken to his case. Understand what this means -- these plaintiff's lawyers (if they in fact exist), declined a case they saw as having merit because the potential client said no, I am not interested in being made whole for my suffering if it doesn't involve publicly smearing an entire law firm even though my claims involve only a couple of alleged discriminators. Remarkable.

Finally, and this is related purely to the PR aspects of this, there is a serious disconnect in Charney's words and actions. He does not, and cannot, claim that there's a real problem with anti-gay bias at S&C. The public statements by that group of openly gay and lesbian S&C partners show otherwise, as do the statements by Schiech and others, who surely would have leapt aboard if they believed there was a problem at S&C. Which is fine -- there doesn't have to be a pattern and practice of discrimination at an employer for a single individual to have suffered unlawful discrimination, obviously. But Charney's breathless explanations about having to take a public stand so that others don't go through whatever he went through, about how he HAD to be so public about his lawsuit because that's the only way to make a change (without exactly identifying what change needs to be made), basically portraying himself as the Rosa Parks of the white shoe law firm world -- it's all inconsistent with reality and not a rational response to the treatment that he's alleging he experienced (even assuming his allegations are true, which is questionable based on the foregoing).

So Charney's impugning of other people's motives and his exhortations to check the "facts" are just so much bile. And the real shame is that Charney's lawsuit cum-sandbox tantrum and media preening will make it that much harder for those who have real claims against law firms to be taken seriously.

I don't know. I kind of was glad to hear Charney's take on things. I thought it what he wrote to that LeGal guy was fine. I still think everyone should reserve judgement again Charney.

fyi, i thought when i first saw this post that the person pictured at left was jack schiech. as i think that's a pretty normal assumption, based on the content of the post, you might want to make clear who the photos are of.

just a suggestion.

Regarding the cascading address line, Charney was obviously at S&C long enough to adopt the house style for all his letters.

Charney and others have attacked the character of S&C and many S&C people.

Unfortunetly, this has been a one way street. Would you S&C people reading this please start dishing the dirt on Charney?

Perhaps S&C people have too much class for that.

Seriously David Lat,
Instead of goading Charney and fueling the fire between these two parties - why don't you do some good and try to get them to resolve and comprimise?
Anonymous90069 (the gayest zip code on the planet)

Anon90069: Are you serious??? You must be new to this site. Lat is a legal gossip blogger, not Jimmy Carter.

What does D Lat look like? Is he hot?
Anonymous90069

Judge for yourself:

http://www.abovethelaw.com/2006/09/nonsequiturs_092806.php

http://www.friendster.com/1241429

Not bad.

Go Charney! Route out the homophobes. I support you taking your case to the public, to the courts, to where ever folks will hear the truth in what you are saying. Knock down another wall of intolerance.

I though D Lat was hot until I got to the picture of him and Katherine Harris.